Gone to God: A Civil War Family’s Ultimate Sacrifice
Keith Kehlbeck, Windy City Publishers, 2013 $27.99 (cloth) $18.99 (paper)
The Reverend John Towles and h youngsters in Prince William is wife Sophronia raised seven County, Va. The war absorbed their three grown boys into its brutal maw. All three enlisted in the 4th Virginia Cavalry, part of Fitz Lee’s brigade in the Army of Northern Virginia.
Early in the war their sister Rosalie died at home. Then fighting near Culpeper claimed Vivian Towles in 1863. James fell in 1864 at Spotsylvania, at age 18. Robert had an adventurous career, scouting beyond the lines and escaping from Old Capitol Prison—but the war’s inexorable blood shed claimed Robert too, at Trevilian Station just short of his 21st birthday. Three Towles children survived the war, among them two boys too young for military service.
A rich array of surviving contemporary documents afforded Keith Kehlbeck the opportunity to tell the Towles’ sad story in impressive depth: a pious, well-educated family coping with waves of disastrous tidings. Robert’s experience comes through most dramatically, because a diary kept in captivity provides strong details. A poem by Sophronia provided Kehl beck’s title: “Their little feet are seen no more, Where once in joy they trod, Those children we have fondly loved—For they are gone to God.” Engraved on Sister Ella’s tombstone are Stonewall Jackson’s famous final words (“Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees”), with a notable addition in marble: “A true Southerner.”
Handsome printing and design and 65 illustrations—including haunting family photos looking at us across the decades—make this volume attractive as well as readable and useful. Books that publish original Civil War material are easy to like. Few resonate with the power of Gone to God.
Originally published in the January 2014 issue of America’s Civil War. To subscribe, click here.
