NYT on the North's '11th-hour soldiers'

The story of how several hundred men and boys from upstate New York entered the fighting in the war’s closing days is one that complicates the common image of Union soldiers. Historians have long focused on the zealots who rushed to the colors in 1861 and 1862. An examination of the North’s late-war recruiting drive suggests that the Union would not have survived without the help of so-called 11th-hour soldiers. • Article