Dear Uncles

<p><b>A New York soldier's eyewitness account of life in the first year of the Civil War from the campgrounds to the battlefields.</b></p><p><i>Dear Uncles</i> is one young man's story from the beginning of the American Civil War. Taken from letters sent home to family and friends including correspondence written for his uncles' local newspaper this book gives an intimate portrait of Arthur McKinstry's journey from a small town in upstate New York to confront Confederate forces in Virginia. Articulate confident and observant McKinstry's letters are written with a journalist's eye and poet's heart giving us a vivid humorous and ultimately heartbreaking view into his experiences of going to war. Whether slogging through rain and mud waiting for care packages from home or watching cannonballs land in camp these dispatches place readers in a young soldier's boots and help them to imagine how family and friends experienced this crisis in American history. <i>Dear Uncles</i> also offers new insights into regimental organization training and the often-overlooked attempt of Confederates to blockade Washington DC's Potomac River supply route. <i>Dear Uncles</i> will fascinate and entertain readers with an interest in American Civil War history.</p>