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    If I Can Get Home This Fall
    A Story of Love, Loss, and a Cause in the Civil War

    Tyler Alexander (Author)

    9781640126664, University of Nebraska Press

    Hardback, published 1 September 2025

    344 pages, 21 photographs, 5 illustrations, index
    22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.666 kg

    “These are some of the best and most moving of the thousands of Civil War letters I have encountered. The reader will experience an extraordinary degree of empathy and admiration for Sergeant Dan Mason of the Sixth Vermont Infantry, who subsequently became captain of the Nineteenth U.S. Colored Troops. Tyler Alexander weaves together the letters with biographical and narrative details that tell a remarkable (and tragic) personal, as well as historical, story.”-James M. McPherson, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
    “In his splendid book, Tyler Alexander brings alive the Civil War experiences of a young fighter in the Vermont Brigade. . . . The narrative features copious, moving letters written by Dan Mason to his sweetheart Harriet Clark and blends these with public accounts of evolving war aims. The result is a vivid account of how a struggle to restore the Union was transformed and how the promise of freedom and democracy to all Americans, regardless of race, was embraced by the rank and file no less than by political leaders. The poignant, gripping, and tragic story speaks to the idealism of the Civil War era and how this history relates to today’s dire challenges.”-Robert Bonner, author of The Soldier’s Pen: Firsthand Impressions of the Civil War
    “In this deeply researched and elegantly written biography of a Vermont soldier, Tyler Alexander takes a step back from the traditional studies of Civil War generals and battles and campaigns and instead carries us into the world of Dan Mason, who rose from a corporal in the Sixth Vermont Infantry to serve as a captain in a Maryland U.S. Colored Troops regiment. But while Mason saw action enough, including a near-death experience at the Battle of the Crater, Alexander shows us the home front as well, as fiancÉ Harriet Clark provided him with a personal reason to fight on and to survive. This is a story well told. Alexander has a fine eye for detail and illuminating anecdotes. His scholarship delves deeply into a variety of sources, both primary and secondary. It is a stimulating and altogether absorbing book.”-Douglas R. Egerton, author of the Lincoln Prize–winning Thunder at the Gates: The Black Civil War Regiments That Redeemed America

    If I Can Get Home This Fall chronicles the epic story of Dan Mason, a white man who served in the Civil War as a soldier in the Sixth Vermont Infantry and as an officer in the Nineteenth U.S. Colored Troops. It is a story of these two units from very different realities but with a common purpose.

    Drawing on Mason’s letters home to his fiancÉ, Harriet Clark, and on other historical records, Tyler Alexander provides a compelling account of the human cost of war and offers insight about the experiences and attitudes of those who witnessed war firsthand, including enlisted troops and officers, men and women, Democrats and Republicans, and white and Black Americans. Alexander examines how the most controversial issues of the war-emancipation, the draft, military strategy, the arming of Black troops, and Reconstruction policy-were viewed in real time by the participants who found themselves engulfed in the maelstrom of war, particularly those from a strongly anti-slavery farming community in the hills of northeast Vermont. The voices from this distant time offer an example of what real patriotism, courage, and moral conviction look like in times of extreme national divisions over race, identity, and the meaning of democracy.
     

    List of Illustrations
    Preface
    Acknowledgments
    Introduction: “
    The Sum of All Villainies”

    1. “
    The Wildest Enthusiasm Prevails”
    (Winter 1861–
    62)
    2. “
    The Final Blow to Secession Will Be Struck Here”
    (Spring 1862)
    3. “
    We Had a Pretty Rough Time”
    (Summer 1862)
    4. “
    I Don’
    t Know What the Next Flop Will Be”
    (Fall 1862)
    5. “
    Disgusted with the Manner the Machine Is Handled”
    (Winter 1862–
    63)
    6. “
    You Cannot Imagine the Thrill of Joy”
    (Spring 1863)
    7. “
    It Begins to Look Like Putting Down Rebellion”
    (Summer 1863)
    8. “
    The Rotten Treacherous Walls of Slavery”
    (Fall 1863)
    9. “
    There Is Something Wild and Exciting That Makes It Bewitching”
    (Winter 1863–
    64)
    10. “
    I Was Really Proud of My Command”
    (Spring 1864)
    11. “
    I Say Fight Them”
    (Summer 1864)
    12. “
    When Will the Cruel War End?”
    (Fall 1864)
    13. “
    My Future Happiness”
    (Winter 1864–
    65)
    14. “
    You Don’
    t Know How I Would Like to See You”
    (Spring 1865)
    15. “
    If I Can Get Home This Fall”
    (Summer 1865)
    16. “
    A Brave and Elegant Soldier”
    (Fall 1865)
    Epilogue: “
    Let Us Not Mock Our Honored Dead”

    Notes
    Bibliography
    Index
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