When the Civil War threatened to destroy the United States, three brothers from rural Miami County Indiana, Joseph, Abner and Charles Wait, volunteered to fight for their country and help put down the Southern rebellion. This is their story spanning four years of war and the death of the youngest brother, 19-year-old Charles, at a hellish POW camp in Salisbury, North Carolina. The diaries of Joseph Wait, the oldest brother, and Benjamin Booth, a Salisbury survivor, vividly depict the sacrifices made by the Wait brothers--and thousands like them--that saved the Union and gave America a new birth of freedom.