Of the 374 graduates of the US Military Academy class of 1942, seventy-nearly one in five- would not survive the war. Their names are engraved on a marker at the academy. Their stories deserve to be remembered, and I am committed, so far as my meager voice can, to tell the stories of all seventy.
On October 7, 1864 a battle between a Confederate commerce raider and a US sloop of war brought the nation to the brink of a foreign war.