They are all infantrymen; none are commissioned officers. One is a German-speaking artist who left 19 watercolors. Another is a free black from Syracuse, N.Y. Six, one of whom is a Unionist, are from slave states. Bonner has reconstructed the experiences of 16 Civil War soldiers, using their own accounts to knit together a ground-level view of the entire conflict. The immediacy of diaries and the intimacy of letters to loved ones bring these infantrymen¿s experiences to vivid life, while the humor of an anonymous cartoonist and the vivid paintings of Private Berckhoff allow us to see their world through their eyes. ¿These documents and images re-create the day-to-day lives of the soldiers who fought and died for the Union and the Confederacy.

¿ Illustrations.