"The effect of war is to petrify the heart," wrote 24-year-old
Hudson Valley farmer-turned-soldier, Richard T. Van Wyck, who had joined
hundreds of his neighbors from throughout Dutchess County, NY, to form
the 150th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment. After nine months encamped
in war-divided Baltimore, the "Dutchess County Regiment" was
thrust into the maelstrom of Gettysburg. "We did terrible execution,
literally piling the Rebs up in masses," he wrote after his unit's
baptism of fire at Gettysburg. "I never was on a battlefield before
and the Lord preserve me from such a sight again." But that was just
the beginning for Van Wyck. The 150th was packed on trains and sent west
to join Sherman's armies as they cut a swath through Tennessee, Georgia
and the Carolinas. When Van Wyck and the other survivors of the 150th were
mustered out of service in 1865, after three years of hard campaigning,
General Henry W. Slocum saluted them with, "No regiment goes home
with a better record." Comprised of 197 letters--one of the largest
collections of Civil War letters written by a single soldier--and including
entries from Van Wyck's daily journal, A War to Petrify the Heart "takes
the reader on an incredible journey that places us at the heart of events
that changed the nation."
400 pages, 50 illustrations
Paper: $24.95 ISBN: 1-883789-11-7
Cloth: $35.95 ISBN: 1-883789-12-5