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When are people willing to sacrifice for the common good? What are the benefits of friendship? How do communities deal with betrayal? And what are the costs and benefits of being in a diverse community? Using the life histories of more than forty thousand Civil War soldiers, Dora Costa and Matthew Kahn answer these questions and uncover the vivid stories, social influences, and crucial networks that influenced soldiers' lives both during and after the war. Drawing information from government documents, soldiers' journals, and one of the most extensive research projects about Union Army soldiers ever undertaken, Heroes and Cowards demonstrates the role that social capital plays in people's decisions. The makeup of various companies--whether soldiers were of the same ethnicity, age, and occupation--influenced whether soldiers remained loyal or whether they deserted. Costa and Kahn discuss how the soldiers benefited from friendships, what social factors allowed some to survive the POW camps while others died, and how punishments meted out for breaking codes of conduct affected men after the war. The book also examines the experience of African-American soldiers and makes important observations about how their comrades shaped their lives. Heroes and Cowards highlights the inherent tensions between the costs and benefits of community diversity, shedding light on how groups and societies behave and providing valuable lessons for the present day.

The author takes the Tolstoyan view that there is often a striking discrepancy between orthodox chronicles of mass battle and the reality of individual behavior and reaction. [Charles Russell Lowell, Jr.] was an articulate young man, toughened by prewar bouts of life- threatening illness, classically educated and given to unusually mature reflections on life and fate; and he and his friends and family left letters that the author uses well. [Carol Bundy] is a skillful writer who weaves this personal material seamlessly into the narrative of warfare; and her ancestor, valedictorian of the Harvard class of 1854, makes an apt subject for reflection. He was certainly a fatalist, as warriors tend to be. Traveling in Italy before the war, Lowell had been fascinated by a painting -- then thought to be by Michelangelo -- of the three Greek Fates, depicted as crones, who spin and measure the skein of human life. Lowell also identified with Shakespeare's Sonnet 111, whose narrator invokes the image of the dyer's hand, \"subdued to what it works in\" -- in his case, it was to be a hand stained by the harsh duties of military command. Lowell accepted this poetic truth, for which another name is responsibility. He recognized that action in a naughty world almost always has mixed consequences, and that this is especially true of war. In his admirable self-knowledge he was free of moral smugness, as New Englanders sometimes were not.

[Charles Russell Lowell, Jr.] was mortally wounded on Oct. 19, 1864, at the Battle of Cedar Creek, in the Shenandoah Valley a battle of some consequence, since a Union defeat could have cost Lincoln the election, which was just two weeks off. In historical memory, Lowell has been much overshadowed by Shaw who with his all-black infantry is the subject of what may be the finest of American war monuments, the Saint- Gaudens monument on Beacon Street. Here is [Carol Bundy Farrar] assembling the mourners at Lowell's funeral in Harvard Yard: \"splendidly got-up members of Boston's Cotton Aristocracy\"; \"clumps of Lowell's former classmates and friends, some on crutches, some maimed, others gaunt and frail\"; and the \"serious, sober\" members of the Harvard Corporation, \"reminders of an authority older than the nation and the Commonwealth.\" \"what Lowell could not have anticipated,\" Bundy writes, was [William Ormsby]'s \"willingness to cooperate\" in making that point. Facing the firing squad, he \"[twisted] to face the whole regiment.\" \"I want you to know,\" he said, \"that I did not desert because I didn't believe in our cause. I know it is right. And it is right that I should die for deserting it.\"

Morris discusses Charles Russell Lowell, a Union officer in the American Civil War. Lowell, one of the Union's most promising young leaders, was killed in the Battle of Cedar Creek in 1864.

Massachusetts in particular was having trouble meeting its quota. In San Francisco, former Boston resident J. Sewall Reed contacted Gov. John Andrew of Massachusetts offering to raise a company of 100 Californians who would serve under the Massachusetts quota if the Bay State would pay their way back east. Frustrated, some of the Californians advocated responding with reprisals against civilians suspected of aiding the guerrillas. [Charles Russell Lowell Jr.] refused to embrace such methods, which he considered unchivalrous. In several sharp clashes [John Singleton Mosby]'s guerrillas inflicted severe casualties on the 2nd Massachusetts. During one ambush in February 1864, the regiment suffered a grievous blow when a Confederate attack resulted in 74 casualties, including the death of the organizer of the California Battalion, Capt. J. Sewall Reed. Mike Sorenson's unparalleled collection of material helps bring the story of the men of the California Battalion to life. The \"California Answers Lincoln's Call\" exhibit includes more than 40 artifacts, 15 manuscripts and 60 images. Among the artifact highlights are the beautiful silk guidon flown by Company M of the 2nd Massachusetts and the sword of fallen organizer Capt. J. Sewall Reed.

Colonel Charles Russell Lowell was born in 1835 and killed in October 1864, leading the pivotal charge in the decisive Battle of Cedar Creek in the Shenandoah Valley. over the course of the civil war, Lowell's idealism was tested by bitter truths and stark realities. Tempered and refined, he could be called the transcendental cavalier.

''Just by being subtle, we haven't had any luck,'' said Daniel A. Biederman, executive director of the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation, the nonprofit organization that manages the renovation and maintenance of the midtown Manhattan park under an agreement with the city. ''With AIDS and the homeless and all the other good causes people are asked to contribute to these days, the fountain has just had trouble competing.'' ''She was a 'doer of good deeds,' as they say in 'The Wizard of Oz,' '' said Adrian Benepe, director of arts and antiquities at the Department of Parks and Recreation. ''The 'purchaser' of her fountain will really be purchasing the public's good will.'' ''Fountains tend to make the city just a little more livable,'' Mr. Biederman said, ''and who can argue that that's not a good cause?''

The Nature of Sacrifice: A Biography of Charles Russell Lowell, Jr., 1835-64 by Carol Bundy is reviewed.

Bundy, an independent scholar and film writer, has written a biography of an uncle who was a true blue member of the antebellum Boston aristocracy.

History Bundy, Carol. The Nature of Sacrifice: A Biography of Charles Russell Lowell, Jr. Mar. 2005. 688p. illus. index. Farrar, $30 (0-374-12077-3). 973.7.