From April 1861 until April 1865, nearly three million soldiers took part in the tragedy known as the American Civil War. At the end of those four long years, a bitterly reunited nation mourned the loss of almost 800,000 of its citizens to death, injury, or illness brought on by the war.

More Civil War battles took place in Tennessee than in any other state.

The last Southern state to secede from the Union, Tennessee contributed 120,000 soldiers to the Confederate cause. Thirty-one thousand Tennesseans fought for the Union—more than all other Confederate states combined. Many of the witnesses to the war in Tennessee were very young. This book tells the story of some of those children and teens: Union Private Elisha Stockwell at the Battle of Shiloh, Confederate spy Ginny Moon, drummer boy Johnny Clem, the McGavock and Carter children who eyewitnessed the bloody Battle of Franklin, boy hero of the Confederacy Sam Davis, slave-turned-soldier Hanson Caruthers, and lots of others.

Written in simple style and richly illustrated, Soldiers, Spies and Spartans tells the story of the Civil War in Tennessee as it has never been told before.