Pale Horse at Plum Run

by Leehan, Brian

• ISBN13: 9780873514293
• ISBN10: 0873514297
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-09-01
• Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Pr

Summary

Minnesota Book Award Winner! The smoke had just cleared from the last volley of musketry at Gettysburg. Nearly 70 percent of the First Minnesota regiment lay dead or dying on the field--one of the greatest losses of any unit engaged in the Civil War. The significance of this July 2, 1863, battle at Gettysburg is widely known, but the harrowing details of the First's heroic stand that stopped a furious rebel assault have long been buried. In Pale Horse at Plum Run Brian Leehan brings the full story of the First at Gettysburg to light as he examines personal accounts, eyewitness reports, and official records to construct a remarkably detailed and compelling narrative. "Brian Leehan's account of the First Minnesota on Cemetery Ridge is the most detailed and complete I have read. His exhaustive research and compelling narrative are impressive and offer a much fuller understanding of the regiment's extraordinary feats." -- Richard Moe, author of The Last Full Measure: The Life and Death of the First Minnesota Volunteers

Author Biography

Brian Leehan is a librarian at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. This is his first book.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xvii
I had been sleeping with a dead man	3	(11)
The morning of a better hope	14	(14)
The best we had in the shop	28	(10)
What meaner place could man be put in?	38	(13)
My God, are these all the men we have here?	51	(5)
Behold! A Pale Horse	56	(21)
Dead men and horses lying all around me	77	(5)
We just rushed in like wild beasts	82	(17)
The funeral of our regiment	99	(25)
Epilogue Ready to do it, whatever it might cost	124	(17)
Appendix 1 A Question of Time	141	(3)
Appendix 2 The Tools of Death	144	(8)
Appendix 3 The Mythology of the First Minnesota	152	(17)
Appendix 4 Casualties	169	(20)
Bibliography	189	(9)
Notes	198	(37)
Index	235