Interesting book, written around 130 years ago by Henty, an Englishman, who wrote adventure stories for boys centered around historical characters or events. This book tells the story of a young man, Vincent, whose father is English and his mother is a Virginian, heiress to a large estate near Richmond. The story starts around 1861 and goes through 1864. Vincent enlists in the army and has many adventures and meets all the major Southern figures of that time such as Stonewall Jackson, JEB Stuart and of course Robert E. Lee. As I grew up in Virginia near Manassas and my grandmother was from Georgia, I grew up listening to stories of the South which were similar to many of the sentiments expressed in the book. Henty does address the evils of slavery and Vincent who had spent some of his childhood in England is very concerned about slavery and is opposed to it. However, his loyalty was first to his state, Virginia, and then to the United States. I did enjoy the book and would like to read some of Henty's other books. His style is old-fashioned and he does spend a lot of time and detail on the battles. If you want to read a book about the American Civil War that was
written close to the time it describes, I recommend this. ( )

With too much dry facts detailing battles and not enough emphasis on the characters, this story never takes off. It's too bad, because it starts off well enough, with a young men living on a slave plantation in Virginia who helps a fugitive slave flee to safety. But once the war starts, the author lets the narrative gets bogged down with details unimportant to the story. ( )

A story of the American Civil War. Originally published in 1889.

This novel presents, chronologically, some of the battles that took place during the Northern invasion of Virginia during the American Civil War.

Odd cover!