Multitudes gave up their time, money, livelihoods, and lives for the American Civil war. They thought that it was their duty to do so–their duty to their God, their duty to themselves, their duty to their friends and families, and their duty to their country and way of life.

At the outset of the war, men were all too happy to take up arms in the name of the North or the South. Expectations were high on both sides that the war would be short and, therefore, not so full of bloodshed. The confidence of so many in this illusion led to the sacrifice of many more.

Faust focuses on the sacrifice of individual soldiers who gave their lives or, in other cases, their time and effort both during and after the Civil War. Also in focus are those on the home front, who let their loved ones go off to war, in many cases encouraging them because of the shared belief in a just cause. Somewhere in between were the nurses, the doctors, the chaplains, and other caregivers, who wanted to help but often found themselves ill-equipped to do anything other than comfort. The sheer numbers of war dead created a culture of shared sacrifice; this idea of shared fate carries throughout the book.