Offering a fascinating look at an ordinary soldier"s struggle to survive not only the horrors of combat but also the unrelenting hardship of camp life, Lee and Jackson"s Bloody Twelfth brings together for the first time the extant correspondence of Confederate lieutenant Irby Goodwin Scott, who served in the hard-fighting Twelfth Georgia Infantry. The collection begins with Scott"s first letter home from Richmond, Virginia, in June 1861, and ends with his last letter to his father in February 1865. Scott miraculously completed the journey from naive recruit to hardened veteran while seeing action in many of the Eastern Theater"s most important campaigns: the Shenandoah Valley, the Peninsula, Second Manassas, and Gettysburg. His writings brim with vivid descriptions of the men"s activities in camp, on the march, and in battle. Particularly revelatory are the details the letters provide about the relationship between Scott and his two African American body servants, whom he wrote about...