From his start as a West Point graduate - Class of 1848 - to his retirement as a brigadier general more than forty years later, John C. Tidball saw much that shaped the United States and its army. Having protected President Lincoln during his First Inaugural, he served with the Army of the Potomac as a battery commander, a horse artillery brigade commander, and a corps artillery commander. Beginning with the First Battle of Bull Run, Tidball saw action in nearly all the major engagements in the Eastern Theater, including Chancellorsville, Yorktown, Williamsburg, Gettysburg, Antietam, and Petersburg.<BR>Using previously unpublished wartime letters and memoirs, Eugene C. Tidball captivates the reader with the story of his most famous relative's years in service to his country. The descriptions of battles and skirmishes offer first-person accounts of the action as well as the men he served with - men such as Irvin McDowell, Ambrose Burnside, and Henry Hunt. Tidball's account extends beyond the Civil War to include his recounting of the Supreme Court's delivery of the Dred Scott decision; his command of the military District of Alaska; his traversing the Southwest in 1853 as a member of the 35th Parellel Pacific Railroad Survey; and his service as aide-de-camp to General-in-Chief William Tecumseh Sherman.