Letters from an Airfield: The True Story of a GI Bride of the Mighty Eighth Book

Circumstances can inspire people to accomplish extraordinary feats. Although Joseph Hopkins Twichell was intelligent, well-educated and a dedicated abolitionist, his background did not, at least on the surface, suggest that this remarkable, sweeping account of the Army of the Potomac would be one of his accomplishments, and one completed when he was 26 years old. After Yale and the Union Theological Seminary in New York, his career path seemed well marked, that of a fairly ordinary New England clergyman, and for much of his adult life he was just that. But the war elevated him. As bloody as it became and as endless as it often seemed, the war also strengthened his faith. Although he was just one man in a vast conflict his letters home constitute a surprisingly broad canvas that includes many of the great battles and the generals and other officers who led them, and well as the petty feuds and bickering that took up a great deal of their time off the battlefield. His sharp, unsparing reportage also delves into the points of view that led to the war, continued all through it and resonate to this day. In the Afterward, we learn that Twichell touched off an angry national debate when he spoke out against a decision by the Yale class of 1896 to plant ivy from the tomb of Robert E. Lee on the campus. And to think that these letters are being published in their entirety for the first time.