An immense Civil War literature has paid surprisingly little attention to the experiences of the common soldier, North and South, and to the varied impact of his military service on American society. In To Appomattox and Beyond, Larry M. Logue explores this subject in a compact synthesis that draws on important new research.

Mr. Logue wants to know which social groups composed the military forces; what happened to the men in battle; how the public and the home front regarded them; how the war changed the rest of their lives; and in what ways they were like and different from their counterparts across the Mason-Dixon line. His conclusions are often surprising - for instance, about the psychological impact of warfare and how it affected the emotional restraint of Union soldiers and the free impulses of the Confederates.

Or how Union veterans generally failed when they tried to translate wartime comradeship into peacetime organizations, while Southerners were able to rekindle the solidarity of the war years in the Ku Klux Klan.