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by Jim Gregory (Author)
Beginning with the epitaphs of Civil War veterans in his California home town's cemetery, author Jim Gregory traced fifty veterans to the battlefields of their youth--Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg, Missionary Ridge, The Wilderness and finally to the pursuit that led to the surrender at Appomattox.Using primary as well as secondary sources--including diaries, letters and official reports--Gregory describes the sights and sounds of battle, the leaders and the private soldiers, the excitement young men felt in combat and the profound depression many experienced in adjusting to postwar life in stories from the most destructive conflict in American history.Just as remarkable is the postwar story of the fifty veterans, part of a remarkable, restless, and haunted generation, who would find a sense of renewal and purpose in the farms they established in a beautiful valley near the Pacific coast.This is a new telling of the Civil War from the vantage point of young men from Ohio. Michigan, Iowa, New Jersey or Missouri who lived out their lives as Californians. Here, they left the legacy of their war behind for later generations to discover.
Author Biography
Jim Gregory was raised in the Upper Arroyo Grande Valley of San Luis Obispo County, California, a rich agricultural area with a diverse population. He attended a two-room country school before graduating from Arroyo Grande High School, where he would return to teach U.S. history and Advanced Placement European history for nineteen years, until his retirement in 2015. He was the Lucia Mar Unified School District's Teacher of the Year in 2010-11. Gregory attended Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo. He studied history and journalism at the University of Missouri-Columbia and earned his teaching credential from California Polytechnic State University. Before beginning his teaching career at San Luis Obispo's Catholic high school, Mission Prep, where he taught for eleven years, he had worked as an editor and newspaper reporter. Gregory lives in Arroyo Grande with his wife, Elizabeth, a teacher at St. Joseph High School in nearby Santa Maria, and his sons John and Thomas. The family also includes a Basset hound, two Irish Setters, a platoon of cats and one tortoise named Lucy.
