In early 1864 General Pickett CSA was put in charge of moving his troops to Kinston NC and then launching an offensive against the Union enclave at New Bern. With any luck, the Yankees might be pushed all the way out of coastal North Carolina.
The Confederate offensive went awry from the very beginning. The rebels got within sight of the town but did not dare attack the formidable works around it. Pickett, who had failed at Gettysburg, was now a failure at New Bern. But if he didn't have the town he still had Union prisoners, some of whom were North Carolina volunteers. Some of these soldiers were accused of being Confederate deserters.
Patterson's book looks at a single incident which occurred in a theater of the Civil War considered a sideshow by many. The execution of POWs for being traitors to the Confederate cause raises many questions, such as whether or not a person can be a traitor to the cause of rebellion, when treason is actually loyalty to the established government. Even if one can be a traitor under such circumstances, can former officers of the U.S. Army, now wearing Confederate gray, judge OTHERS for treason?
Well-written, one of the few things I can say against the book is that it has no map of the action at New Bern... it's a little hard to keep track of what is going on when you don't know the geography.
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