SILENT CAVALRY

A Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist uncovers the little-known story of the Union soldiers from Alabama who played a decisive role in the Civil War, and how they were scrubbed from the history books - until now.

We all know how the Civil War was won: by a courageous troop of Yankees who triumphed over the South. But as veteran journalist and Alabama native Howell Raines reveals in this momentous history, it was not only Yankee soldiers who helped General William Tecumseh Sherman burn Atlanta to the ground, but also an unsung regiment of 2,066 Alabamian yeoman farmers - including Raines's own great-great grandfather. Called the First Alabama Cavalry, USA, these "Mountain Unionists" were the point of the spear that Sherman drove through the heart of the Confederacy, and the famed general hailed the regiment as among the most effective cavalrymen in his army of nearly 100,000. So why don't we know anything about them?

Silent Cavalry is an epic American history that shows how the South won the war after the war, as well as a never-before-told scholarly detective story that exposes how some of the most patriotic Americans of all time were effectively erased from the record. Drawing on family history, the lore of his native Alabama, and investigative skills honed by six decades in journalism, Raines brings to light a conspiracy that sought to undermine the accomplishments of these renegade Southerners, implicating everyone from a former Confederate general to a gaggle of Lost Cause historians in the Ivy League. It's a saga that weaves between the gleaming archives of Columbia University and the anonymous gravestones near Raines's childhood home in Alabama.

By reversing this historiographic deconstruction, Silent Cavalry is a testament to the immense power of storytelling to destroy and, in some cases, to redeem.

Howell Raines is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and former executive editor of The New York Times. He is the author of four previous books: Whiskey Man, The One That Got Away, Fly Fishing Through the Midlife Crisis, and My Soul is Rested. Based in Pennsylvania, he was born and began his career in Alabama.