Sins of My Brothers (ePub)

Sins of My Brothers is the historic account of a harrowing and gritty tale of survival, a true story fueled by greed, corruption, and incompetence. The "powers that be" on both sides make disastrous decisions that result in heartbreaking consequences.

Canadian-born Robert Knox Sneden aspires to become an architect in America. Soon after his arrival in the U.S., Sneden answers the call to quell the rebellion enlisting as a 29-year-old private in the 40th New York Volunteer Infantry. Sneden is captured by "The Gray Ghost" John S. Mosby and imprisoned in Andersonville. POW and Union mapmaker Robert Sneden secretly documents the Andersonville experience within its walls awaiting parole or death.

Epp McIntosh, the son of an Illinois shoemaker proudly claimed to have once been an office boy for a young upstart country lawyer named Abraham Lincoln. Years later, McIntosh answers President Lincoln's call to preserve the Union, serving as a 17-year-old drummer boy in the 14th Illinois Infantry. Eager to "see the elephant", Epp enters the Civil War, is captured in Ackworth, Georgia, and confined at the notorious Andersonville Prison. There, he endures unimaginable horrors as a POW and after being paroled, survives the worst maritime disaster in American history.

Ill-prepared for the volume of POWs arriving daily and lacking in supplies, Confederate prison commandant Captain Henry Wirz struggles to effectively run the Georgia stockade. Stories of disease, starvation, neglect, and abuse abound within the stockade walls. The inmates suffer inhumane treatment not only from their captors but also from those among their own ranks, a bloodthirsty gang called the Raiders¿until the miserable and shocking end.

Vainglorious John Wilkes Booth has plans of his own to balance the scales of the prisoner exchange. Aided by a shadow conspiracy and pushed to the limits of sanity, Booth commits the most heinous crime of the century, assassinating President Abraham Lincoln¿dividing the Union further still. The largest manhunt in the nation tracks Booth and his accomplice David Herold as they attempt to flee their pursuers and avoid the hangman's noose.

A government-chartered Mississippi paddle-wheel boat, the Sultana, is headed north, loaded with more than 2,000 paroled POWs with Epp McIntosh among the doomed passengers. Cash-strapped Sultana Captain James Cass Mason chooses profits over safety when he accepts a bribe from corrupt Union Colonel Reuben Hatch. The sick and weary POW's ride home abruptly and explosively ends during the cold and dark early hours of April 27, 1865, a few miles north of Memphis.