Michael and Gabriel Maurer never wanted the war that came to their door. They were not slave owners and they personally abhorred the timeless institution that threatened to push the South into an angry secession. Yet when North Carolina disavowed the Constitution of the United States, they would choose to join the fight for her continued independence rather than turn their backs on her desperate, passionate plea to her sons. And fight they did. The beautiful ‘Alex’ Parker, whose beloved Mister Lincoln had ordered the call to arms to ‘still the insurrection, ’ damned her Federal brethren, the mindless desecrations of war, and the hundred fields of battle that separated her from Michael and their beloved Salem. A battlefield called Gettysburg would prove a turning point in their war and in the War Between the States as the lovers come together once more to fight the horrors of a misbegotten past for Michael’s own tenuous freedom.