Military Writers Society of America 2012 Gold Medal for History

The Boys of Diamond Hill is a biography about a family of soldiers from Abbeville County, South Carolina. The events of the 1860s swept them from their farms to distant battlefields covering almost every theater of the war they were fighting for independence from the northern government. They left behind an extensive collection of letters detailing their experiences.

This work was released March 24, 2011 from McFarland Publishers.

This work follows brothers: William, Daniel, Pressley, Thomas and Andrew Boyd along with Fenton Hall, the husband of their eldest sister. Daniel, Pressley and Andrew served in the Seventh South Carolina Infantry; William in the First South Carolina Rifles; Thomas in the Nineteenth South Carolina Infantry and Fenton in the Sixth South Carolina Cavalry. This sweeping work tracks their participation in the war on nearly every front that the Confederacy fought on. Northern Virginia, Mississippi, Tennessee and the Charleston coastal defense. Finally it follows Daniel Boyd as he fights with Johnston’s Army of Tennessee in the Carolina’s Campaign up until the surrender at Bennett Place near Durham, North Carolina.

Also covered extensively are close friends and relatives often mentioned. As a result, one family — the Alewines — are followed after the war on their journey into the western wilderness of Arkansas where they became one of the pioneering families in that section.