Includes bibliographical references (p. 281-300) and index.

""Darling, I never wanted to gow home as bad in my life as I doo now and if they don't give mee a furlow I am going any how." Written in December 1862 by Private Wright Vinson in Tennessee to his wife, Christiana, in Georgia, these lines go to the heart of why Scott Walker wrote this history of the Fifty-seventh Georgia Infantry, a unit of the famed Mercer's brigade." "All but a few members of the Fifty-seventh lived within a close radius of eighty miles. More than just an account of their military engagements, this is a collective biography of a close-knit group. Walker shows how family ties, friendships, and other intimate dynamics played out in wartime settings." "Drawing on memoirs and a trove of unpublished letters and diaries, Walker follows the soldiers of the Fifty-seventh as they push far into Unionist Kentucky, starve at the siege of Vicksburg, guard Union prisoners at the Andersonville stockade, defend Atlanta from Sherman, serve as the rear guard in Hood's retreat from Tennessee, and join in the last charge of the Confederate Army of Tennessee at Bentonville, North Carolina."--BOOK JACKET