Dust-Covered Foot Soldiers

After American troops spent four years fighting the Civil War, the struggle to restore the Union ended with powerful victories by the Northern Army. President Abraham Lincoln’s massive million men, clad in blue and wielding terribly swift swords, dwindled to a small contingent of Regulars, most of whom were stationed beyond the Mississippi River. These men served at far-flung, often isolated outposts as constabularies. “We are about 1,000 miles from nowhere excepting it be the verges o