Follow the story of five young southern kinsmen from their first battle at Big Bethel, on the Virginia Peninsula, to the Surrender at Appomattox. Without meaning to, they made possible by a profuse and unconsciously eloquent mass of letter, diaries, and repeated oral traditions the survival of knowledge of what men they were, and how they fought and triumphed and lost. This is not a fictional account, it would be both presumptuous and fatuous to put into their mouths words they did not say, or into their minds and hearts thoughts and emotions they did not know. The record still speaks truly for them, word and thought and emotions.