(Honorable Mention, 2006 Lincoln Prize Competition) The Twentieth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, nicknamed the Harvard Regiment for its preponderance of college-educated members, was one of the most influential northern units in the Army of the Potomac, claiming such members as Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.; his cousins William Lowell Putnam and James Jackson Lowell; and Paul Joseph Revere and his brother Edward H.R. Revere, both grandsons of Paul Revere. In his superb history, Richard Miller shows how the experiences of the Twentieth Massachusetts would define how later generations of Americans understood the Civil War.
"Richard Miller's Harvard's Civil War is quite simply the most outstanding Civil War regimental history I have read. One of the best units in the Army of the Potomac, officered by Harvard alumni, the 20th Massachusetts Infantry fought in all of that army's battles and earned plaudits to match its heavy casualties. Walt Whitman's prediction that the real war would never get in the books was wrong; the real war is in this book."—James M. McPherson
