At the very end of the War Between the States, seventeen commanders delivered farewell addresses to the men they had led through four years of hell during which 750,000 died and over a million were maimed. The seventeen include General Robert E. Lee, General Ulysses S. Grant, Major General William T. Sherman, Lieutenant-General Nathan Bedford Forrest, Major General George Gordon Meade, Colonel John Singleton Mosby, Lieutenant-Colonel Charles T. Trowbridge (U.S. Colored Troops), General Joseph E. Johnston, Major General Joseph Wheeler and Major General Robert F. Hoke.
Those eight Confederate and nine Union addresses are important documents in American history because they show clearly what each side was fighting for.
Historian Michael R. Bradley has given us exciting narrative history researched in minute detail on the seventeen commanders, their units, battles and last words to their men. If you love history, it does not get better than this.
--------- from the Prologue by Gene Kizer, Jr.
The Prologue alone is worth the cost of the book, as is the Introduction, in which Dr. Bradley conclusively punctures the Single Cause Myth. Confederate and Union commanders speak from their hearts after four years of bloody struggle. Bradley's mini-biographies, of each commander, add a huge amount of depth to the work. The Last Words is worthy of a historian of the first rank, which Dr. Bradley clearly is. It should be on the bookshelf of every serious student of the Civil War. I give it my highest recommendation without qualification or reservation.
--------- Dr. Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr., author of The Encyclopedia of Confederate Generals: The Definitive Guide to the 426 Leaders of the South's War Effort, and over 40 other books including Bust Hell Wide Open: The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest.