More than 70,000 books about the Civil War have been
published since 1861, and almost every one of them quotes from letters
exchanged by family and friends, but there has never been a book about how
those letters were delivered — until now.
Absalom Markland, a native of Kentucky and a Special
Agent of the U.S. Post Office Department, was the man who delivered the
most valuable ingredient in U.S. soldiers’ fighting spirit during the four
terrible Civil War years—letters between the front lines and the home
front. At the beginning of the war, at the request of his Kentucky
childhood schoolmate, Ulysses S. Grant, Markland created the most efficient
military mail system ever devised, parts of which are in use today. He met
regularly with President Abraham Lincoln during the war and carried important
messages between Lincoln and Generals Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman at
crucial points in our nation’s peril.
When the Ku Klux Klan waged its reign of terror after the
Civil War, Markland’s decisive was the tipping point that President Grant
needed to combat the Klan. The very different military mail system of the
Confederacy is also a part of this story of two men from Kentucky named
Absalom who should never be forgotten. Delivered Under Fire
tells their amazing stories.
Candice Shy Hooper served on the editorial advisory
board of The Journal of Military History and on the board of directors of
President Lincoln's Cottage at the National Soldiers Home. She is a member of
the Ulysses S. and Julia D. Grant Historical Home Advisory Board. Hooper is
author of "Lincoln's Generals' Wives: Four Women Who Influenced the
Civil War - for Better and for Worse," which won three national
awards.