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The Last to Die By Graham K. Strickland |
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Read the review reprinted from Our State Magazine |
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This Civil War novel, The Last to Die, tells the story of a
small group of non-slaveholding farmers who lived across the Cape Fear
River from Fayetteville, North Carolina in eastern Cumberland County.
They go about their lives never dreaming that it would all be changed by events in
Charleston over which they had no control. Called up in April of 1862,
these men endure the white hot heat of Morris Island in Charleston Harbor
where they endured a heavy bombardment from Union monitors as well as land
based artillery. They help repel the attack of the 54th Massachusetts
regiment which was the subject of the motion picture, Glory, and one of the
first uses of "colored" troops in the war. |
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As part of the 51st North Carolina regiment, Clingman's brigade, Hokes
Division, these soldiers endure some of the hardest fighting of that
conflict around Richmond and Petersburg in the summer of 1864.
These farmers, now soldiers, engage in a full scale frontal assault to push
back the enemy at Drewry's Bluff. They man entrenched positions at
Cold Harbor and help maintain the Confederate lines for General Lee.
They run into the trenches at Petersburg in time to keep that city from
falling. They are sent to Fort Fisher as the last port of the
Confederacy falls to a Federal invasion fleet, and then play an important
part in the strategy as an attempt is made to stop General Sherman's sweep
through the state at Bentonville in 1865. The novel has much more to interest the reader than carefully researched wartime experiences as the author alternates between the war front and the wives at home who are faces with severe shortages. There is also a tragic wreck involving a train carrying Confederate prisoners which collides with a coal train near Shohola, Pennsylvania, causing the death of nearly seventy prisoners and their Union guards. In spite of being one of the worst rail-road accidents up to that time, it is practically unknown in Civil War literature. The Civil War buff will find a treasure in The Last to Die.
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