On the bloody evening of November 30, 1864, at the Battle of Franklin, one of the Confederacy's most promising cavalry officers, Brigadier General John Adams, rode to his death beneath the Union earthworks. The tragedy carried a deeply personal irony that reached across the divided nation: Adams's father-in-law, Dr. Charles McDougall, was himself a distinguished Union Army surgeon who had recently retired as Surgeon General of the U.S. Army. As the Civil War tore apart families as well as armies, the death of Adams symbolized the painful reality that loyalty to country and loyalty to kin could stand on opposite sides of the battlefield.
In that terrible assault at Franklin, Dr...
Bringing the