The Colors of Courage: Gettysburg's Forgotten History: Immigrants, Women, and African Americans in the Civil War's Defining Battle (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780465014576)

Gettysburg has been written about and studied in great detail over the last 140 years, but there are still many participants whose experiences have been overlooked. In augmenting this incomplete history, Margaret Creighton presents a new look at the decisive battle through the eyes of Gettysburg's women, immigrant soldiers, and African Americans. An academic with a superb flair for storytelling, Creighton draws on memoirs, letters, diaries, and newspapers to get to the hearts of her subjects. Mag Palm, a free black woman living with her family outside of town on Cemetery Ridge, was understandably threatened by the arrival of Lee's Confederate Army; slavers had tried to capture her three years before. Carl Schurz, a political exile who had fled Germany after the failed 1848 revolution, brought a deeply held fervor for abolitionism to the Union Army. Sadie Bushman, a nine-year-old cabinetmaker's daughter, was commandeered by a Union doctor to assist at a field hospital. In telling the stories of these and a dozen other participants, Margaret Creighton has written a stunningly fluid work of original history -- a narrative that is sure to redefine the Civil War's most essential battle.

Author: Margaret S. Creighton
ISBN-10: 0465014577
ISBN-13: 9780465014576
Publisher: Basic Books
Language: English
Published: 07/04/2006
Pages: 360
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 1.00d

Review Citation(s):
Kliatt 11/01/2006 pg. 38