Stephen Dodson Ramseur, born in Lincolnton, North Carolina, in 1837,
compiled an enviable record as a brigadier in the Army of Northern
Virginia. Commissioned major general the day after his twenty-seventh
birthday, he was the youngest West Pointer to achieve that rank in the
Confederate army. He later showed great skill as a divisional leader in
the 1864 Shenandoah Valley campaigns before he was fatally wounded at
Cedar Creek on 19 October of that year. Based on Ramseur's extensive
personal papers and on other sources, this absorbing biography examines
the life of one of the South's most talented commanders and brings into
sharper focus some of the crosscurrents of this turbulent period.