This is the Civil War as seen through the eyes of six young West Point graduates: George Armstrong Custer, Stephen Dodson Ramsuer, Henry Algernon du Pont, John Pelham, Thomas Lafayette Rosser, and Wesley Merritt. At the military academy they forged bonds stronger than brotherhood, but a few short years later had to choose between blue and gray, even facing each other on opposite sides of battlefields.

Presents a biographical sketch, photograph, and short bibliography of 137 Confederate generals who attained their rank through a route other than presidential appointment and have therefore been largely overlooked in historical accounts of the Civil War. This book "brings to light a class of officers never before covered in any other book: the Confederacy's other generals. They are the men who attained their rank outside the usual avenue of appointment...