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Revealing the mind-set of a soldier seared by the horrors of combat even as he kept faith in his cause, Last to Leave the Fieldshowcases the private letters of Ambrose Henry Hayward, a Massachusettsnative who served in the 28th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry.

Hayward’s service, which began with his enlistment in the summer of 1861and ended three years later following his mortal wounding at the Battleof Pine Knob in Georgia, took him through a variety of campaigns inboth the Eastern and Western theaters of the war. He saw action in fivestates, participating in the battles of Antietam, Chancellorsville, andGettysburg as well as in the Chattanooga and Atlanta campaigns. Throughhis letters to his parents and siblings, we observe the early idealismof the young recruit, and then, as one friend after another died besidehim, we witness how the war gradually hardened him. Yet, despite theincreasing brutality of what would become America’s costliest conflict,Hayward continually reaffirmed his faith in the Union cause, reenlistingfor service late in 1863.

Hayward’s correspondence takes us through many of the war’s most significant developments,
including the collapse of slavery and the enforcement of Union policytoward Southern civilians. Also revealed are Hayward’s feelings aboutConfederates, his assessments of Union political and militaryleadership, and his attitudes toward desertion, conscription, forcedmarches, drilling, fighting, bravery, cowardice, and comradeship.

Ultimately, Hayward’s letters reveal the emotions—occasionally guardedbut more often expressed with striking candor—of a soldier who at everybattle resolved to be, as one comrade described him, “the first tospring forward and the last to leave the field.”

Timothy J. Orr is an assistant professor of military history at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.