19th U.S. Colored Troops
6th Vermont Infantry
A01=Tyler Alexander
African American history
American History
Author_Tyler Alexander
Black history
Black military history
Category=NHK
Category=NHTB
Category=NHWR3
Civil Rights
Civil War
civil war biography
civil war history
Civil War Literature
civil war memoir
Emancipation
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
military history
Nineteenth Century History
Racial Justice
Slavery
Social History
Soldier Morale
U.S. history
Union Army
Vermont history
Product details
- ISBN 9781640126664
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 01 Sep 2025
- Publisher: Potomac Books Inc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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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.
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.
Tyler Alexander is an educator in Vermont who teaches American history and government. He is a former James Madison Fellow and studied forestry, history, and education at the University of Maine and the University of Vermont. One of Alexander’s ancestors served alongside Dan Mason in Company D of the Sixth Vermont.
