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The Fishing Creek Confederacy: A Story of Civil War Draft Resistance. By Richard A. Sauers and Peter Tomasak. Shades of Blue and Gray Series. (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 2012. Pp. [xvi], 224. $35.00, ISBN 978-0-8262-1988-6.)
In the summer of 1864, civilian morale in the North hit bottom. Ulysses S. Grant's army had suffered about 60,000 casualties in the six-week Overland campaign. The other Union armies seemed to be making little or no progress. Going into the service was hardly an appealing option to many northern men, and the military had an increasingly difficult time filling its ranks.
Enter three deserters in Columbia County, Pennsylvania. Confronted with a posse looking to arrest them, the trio got into a gunfight that left a Union lieutenant mortally wounded. That incident sparked...