These 250 photographs tell the saga of North Carolinians fighting in the Civil War - at Big Bethel, at Gettysburg with Lee, in defense of their home state, and finally at Durham with the surrender of Johnston's army to Sherman.

Centering on the common soldier, Portraits of Conflict: A Photographic History of North Carolina in the Civil War, the sixth in the University of Arkansas Press's award-winning series, tells the stories of the actual people, rich and poor, whose lives were changed forever by the nation's great drama.

Here is the tale of a wife who disguised herself as a new recruit so she could avoid separation from her husband, and of brothers who suffered identical injuries and leg amputations within two weeks of each other.