The Great Rebellion: The Emergence of the American Conscience

This is a book about the American people and what happened to them during one Christmas week, as the result of a tragic Thursday, and on a Palm Sunday. It is a book of love and hate, of faith and fear, of tormented loyalties and unyielding principles, of passion and patience and greed and sacrifice. It is a book of some moments that took years to crystallize and of other moments that were clear and complete in the winking of an eye. It is a book about persons so well known in history and legend that we speak their names as though they were honored kinsmen and about others who rest today beneath crumbled, forgotten tombstones. They were all related, these people--the great and the unknown, the friend and the foe ; and although they traveled many roads they reached the same valley, and, crossing over, rested beneath the same trees. Their tragedy they called the American Civil War ; their victory they called Freedom.-- Prologue.