Soldiers Just Like You

Charleston, South Carolina,1863. The Confederate "cradle of rebellion" is under siege. Union forces boasting a fleet of ironclad Monitors and monstrous coast artillery shake the lowcountry to its core. Repeated attacks fail to take the citadels protecting the city, a ring of defenses that includes the legendary Fort Sumter. The culmination of the siege is an assault on a sand fort called Battery Wagner spearheaded by the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, the first African American unit to fight in the war. The gallant attack on Battery Wagner fails like all the others with catastrophic Union losses. But the life and death struggle of the surviving freedom-fighters of the 54th is only beginning. Sixty men of the black regiment are captured. They are the first black POWs of the war. Confederate authorities have long threatened to summarily execute blacks captured in uniform. The State of South Carolina contends the men of the 54th are not soldiers at all, but are slaves in revolt. The governor presses the state's jurisdiction in the matter and the soldiers are put on trial, charged with servile insurrection. Conviction will mean execution. The defense team includes a hapless, quixotic Unionist lawyer named Nelson Mitchell and Edward McCrady, an aristocratic Confederate colonel. To win their case, this unlikely tandem must overcome the war-time hysteria and inherent racism of the times; outsmart a slick upstate prosecutor, deal with a cynical judge, and combat a psychopathic prison warden; and they must convince an all-white jury that the black defendants are indeed soldiers due the fair treatment given any prisoner of war. Soldiers Just Like You is based on the true story of a long forgotten trial where courage and justice overcome racism and slavery.

Kelly J. O’Grady is a native of Richmond, Virginia. He holds a history degree from the College of William and Mary, and a master’s degree from the University of Mary Washington. A former historian with the National Park Service, he has written and lectured on Civil War topics for twelve years. His 2000 non-fiction book, Clear the Confederate Way: The Irish in the Army of Northern Virginia was a ground-breaking study of the Irish immigrants in Robert E. Lee’s Confederate army. The University of South Carolina listed it as one of the 100 books everyone should read about the Civil War.