This is the story of the four McDonough County residents from Bushnell and Prairie City who received the Congressional Medal of Honor for their heroic acts during the Civil War. Chaplain Milton Haney, Sergeant Jacob Sanford and Corporal Robert M. Cox were volunteers in the Fifty-fifth Illinois Regiment and Samuel McConnell served as a Captain with the 119th Illinois Volunteers, But this story is not theirs alone. One-hundred twenty-nine brave men from Bushnell, Prairie City and Marietta served in Companies F and G of the Fifty-fifth Regiment and 35 gave their very lives to preserve the union...

This is the story of the eleven Companies of the "Fighting Fourteenth Regiment" as seen through the eyes of James William Covington, a self-styled "blacksmith with a literary turn" and member of the Regimental Band, along with seven other soldiers who recorded their thoughts and feelings in journals and letters to their loved ones. They were common men who lived in the most uncommon of times and as such, were called upon to perform uncommon deeds. It is seen against the backdrop of our country's greatest struggle; a war that pitted brother against brother, father against son, and took the...