In Deadly Earnest

In Deadly Earnest: The History of the First Missouri Brigade, CSA is a 1991 book written by Phil Gottschalk and published by Missouri River Press. The book follows the story of the brigade from its formation as a unit of the Confederate States Army in the early stages of the American Civil War to the end of the war, and posits that the men of the unit were fighting for the Southern United States, not slavery. It is illustrated with maps and photographs. Reviewers characterized the book as redundant and criticized its tendency to digress off its topic. One reviewer questioned some of the book's conclusions and described it as "ancestor worship posing as history". Other reviewers, acknowledging the book's flaws, described it as a positive addition to the bibliography of the American Civil War.

Content

In Deadly Earnest: The History of the First Missouri Brigade, CSA was written by journalist Phil Gottschalk and was published by Missouri River Press in 1991. The topic of the book is the First Missouri Brigade, a unit of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War, although it also contains material about more general subject, including an overview of other Missouri Confederates units who were active during the early stages of the war. One of the books' premises is that the brigade was not fighting for the preservation of slavery, but for the South. In Deadly Earnest covers the story of the brigade throughout the entire war, as opposed to The South's Finest, a similar work that only extends its coverage through the Siege of Vicksburg.