Witness to War: Hayden and the Civil War: BOOK THREE - (1861–1865) (Witness to War – The Hayden Carter Chronicles 3)

A boy pulled through time. A nation torn apart. A war that would decide the meaning of freedom.

Hayden Carter never chooses when history claims him. The Pull drags him without warning, thrusting him into America’s most defining moments. This time, it seizes him in 1861 — just as cannons thunder at Fort Sumter and the Civil War begins.

One moment, Hayden is a modern teenager. The next, he wears Union blue, musket on his shoulder, marching into a conflict that will pit brother against brother and test whether the United States can endure.

At Antietam, Hayden runs messages across fields where corn turns red with blood. He feels the ground shake under cannon fire and sees a single day leave 23,000 men dead or wounded. In that moment, he learns that history’s pages are written in human sacrifice.

At Gettysburg, he scrambles through chaos as Confederate soldiers surge forward in Pickett’s Charge. He watches Union lines hold the high ground — and realizes that courage, more than numbers, can turn the tide of a war.

On the Mississippi River, Hayden sees Vicksburg starved into submission. Families huddle in caves to escape shellfire, and soldiers gnaw on scraps of food. Victory comes not with glory, but with endurance.

In New York City, Hayden stumbles into draft riots that tear the Union’s largest city apart. He sees mobs torch buildings and target Black citizens, proof that division was not confined to battlefields alone.

Then comes Sherman’s March — a path of fire stretching sixty miles wide across Georgia. Hayden watches homes, railroads, and fields destroyed in the name of breaking the South’s will. He learns that some wars are fought not only against armies, but against hearts.

Captured and imprisoned at Andersonville, Hayden experiences the horror of starvation, disease, and despair. Surrounded by thousands of broken men, he witnesses cruelty not born of gunfire, but of neglect.

Through it all, Hayden meets people who give the war its human face. A Union nurse, Maggie O’Leary, who bandages wounds with fierce compassion. A Confederate farm boy, Caleb Turner, who struggles with loyalty to home and conscience. A freedman, Samuel Green, who takes up arms to claim the liberty denied him.

And always, the voice of Abraham Lincoln — solemn, burdened, determined — echoes through Hayden’s journey. Hayden stands in the crowd at Gettysburg as Lincoln speaks of a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” He hears the Emancipation Proclamation read aloud, a document that transforms the war from saving the Union to redefining freedom itself.

The Pull never lets Hayden stay forever. He is there to witness, not to change. But in every moment — from Appomattox Courthouse, where Lee surrenders to Grant, to Ford’s Theatre, where Lincoln’s life is cut short — Hayden carries forward the memory of a nation’s struggle.

For Hayden, history is not a textbook. It is smoke choking his lungs, fear pounding in his chest, and the cries of ordinary people who lived through extraordinary times.

He learns that freedom is fragile. Unity is precious. And sacrifice is the price every generation must face to keep both alive.

Witness to War: Hayden and the Civil War (1861–1865) is the third volume in the sweeping Hayden Carter Chronicles. Each book plunges Hayden into another of America’s wars, from the Revolution to the modern day.

Readers walk beside Hayden, seeing through his eyes what it meant to fight, to lose, and to endure.

This isn’t the story of generals and presidents alone. It’s the story of soldiers in the trenches, families waiting by the hearth, enslaved men and women whispering of freedom, and a boy who carries their voices across time.

Step into the smoke and sorrow of the Civil War. Walk with Hayden Carter. Witness history as if you were there — and carry its fire forward.