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[email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights. Map of military installations around Alexandria, Virginia, in September 1862, from the Civil War memoir of Union soldier Robert Knox Sneden, whose 500 watercolors, maps and drawings are the largest collection of soldier art to survive the war. Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division/Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, VA Foreword The Civil War lives on in our imagination as a series of black and white photographs; stoic young men in uniform, fields strewn with bloated corpses, the smoldering ruins of a once proud city. It is a silent, static world, as if stilled by tragedy. But if our modern world is anything to judge by, war is vivid, chaotic, and noisy. It is above all a human experience filled with passion, tragedy, heroism, despair, and even, at times, unexpected humor. That is the story we went looking for. The series Mercy Street was largely inspired by the memoirs of doctors and female volunteer nurses who were in many ways the unsung heroes of the Civil War. For every soldier wounded in battle, there were dozens of caregivers behind the front lines selflessly trying to repair the physical and psychological damage.