The story of the author's great-grandfather's Civil War experience, based on a remarkable set of newly discoverd letters—a powerful, moving addition to the firsthand soldiers' accounts of the Civil War.

Dear Mother,
I was very glad to hear from home this morning. It is the first time since I left Otterville. We marched from Sedalia 120 miles....I almost feel anxious to be in a battle & yet I am almost afraid. I feel very brave sometimes & think if I should be in an engagement, I never would leave the field alive unless the stars & stripes floated triumphant. I do not know how it may be. If there is a battle & I should fall, tell with pride & not with grief that I fell in defense of liberty. Pray that I may be a true soldier.

Not since Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage have the trials and tribulations of a private soldier of the Civil War been told with such beguiling force. The Red Badge of Courage, however, was fiction. This story is true.

In Testament, Benson Bobrick draws upon an extraordinarily rich but hitherto untapped archive of material to create a continuous narrative of how that war was fought and lived. Here is virtually the whole theater of conflict in the West, from its beginnings in Missouri, through Kentucky and Tennessee, to the siege of Atlanta under Sherman, as experienced by Bobrick's great-grandfather, Benjamin W. ("Webb") Baker, an articulate young Illinois recruit. Born and raised not far from the Lincoln homestead in Coles County, Webb had stood in the audience of one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, become a staunch Unionist, and answered one of Abraham Lincoln's first calls for volunteers. The ninety-odd letters on which his story is based are fully equal to the best letters the war produced, especially by a common soldier; but their wry intelligence, fortitude, and patriotic fervor also set them apart with a singular and still-undying voice.

In the end, that voice blends with the author's own, as the book becomes a poignant tribute to his great-grandfather's life -- and to all the common soldiers of the nation's bloodiest war.

In August 1861, a nineteen-year-old Illinois farm boy named Benjamin Webster ("Webb") Baker enlisted in the Union Army. For three years he fought in Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia--virtually the whole Western theater. Through it all he wrote compelling letters home describing his experiences. Generations later Benson Bobrick has used his ancestor's letters to write this stirring chronicle of one soldier's war. Not since the fictional "The Red Badge of Courage" have the trials of a soldier's Civil War been told with such beguiling force. Pea Ridge, Perryville, Stones River, Chickamauga--at these and other battles, Webb experienced the horror of war firsthand. By turns stoic, brave, and sorrowful, he writes of sleeping on the bare ground in winter, of harsh food rationing because of Confederate cavalry raids on baggage trains, of being wounded, and, most movingly, of death--including the death of his own brother, whom he buried on the field. Bobrick skillfully blends that voice with his own in a poignant tribute to his great-grandfather and a vivid narrative that will be cherished by anyone interested in the Civil War.

Frank J. Williams Chair, The Lincoln Forum From Pea Ridge to General Sherman's march to Atlanta, "Webb" Baker marched with the 25th Illinois Regiment. His letters home form a tapestry of a soldier in war....Benson Bobrick's superlative narrative enhances this great resource for a better understanding of our Civil War.