Pure Heart: The Faith of a Father and Son in the War for a More Perfect Union (SIGNED COPY)
by: William F. Quigley

Hardcover. Kent State University Press, 2nd pr., 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 381 pages. SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR on the title page. In the summer of 1862, as Union morale ebbed low with home front division over war costs, coming emancipation, and demoralizing battlefield losses, 24-year-old William White Dorr enlisted as a lieu- tenant in the 121st Pennsylvania Volunteers, a new Union regiment organizing in Philadelphia. His father, the Reverend Benjamin Dorr, rector of Christ Church, Philadelphia, strived to prevent divisions in his congregation from sundering that Episcopal church historically tied to the nation's founding. William F. Quigley Jr. presents a narrative that remarkably encapsulates much of the North's experience of the war. Reverend Benjamin Dorr was one of the most important clergymen of the era, who strived to hold his warring parishioners intact. His efforts paralleled Lincoln's far greater but comparable challenge to preserve the Union. Clean copy.