“I hope to have God on my side,” Lincoln reportedly said, “but I must have Kentucky.” Garfield’s regiment did not have a hope of succeeding. The Confederate force it faced was two thousand men strong, fortified with a battery of four cannons and several wagonloads of ammunition, and led by Humphrey Marshall, a well-known, well-seasoned brigadier general who had graduated from West Point the year after Garfield was born. In sharp contrast, the 42nd had five hundred fewer soldiers and no artillery. Worse, its commander was a young academic who had spent the past decade thinking about Latin and
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