Publisher's Synopsis
Private Worth's First Battle is a novel of the Civil War. Written as a memoir as told to an interviewer more than thirty years after the war's end, it traces the story of Jedediah Worth, a teenaged slave who escapes slavery to become a soldier fighting for the Union and the freedom of his people.
At secession, although he vaguely realizes that the conflict started over the question of slavery, Jedediah regards Kentucky, and the South, as home. When his master's sons join the Confederate army, he and his friend Obie accompany them as their personal servants. Eager to prove himself as a man, Jedediah runs ammunition and even rescues a wounded Confederate until, with Obie's prodding, he comes to realize his valor should serve the cause of emancipation.
Although he learns that his master plans to free him, Jedediah comes to realize that freedom should not be a gift, because for his people to have been enslaved was unjust in the first place. In the confusion surrounding the battle of Shiloh, he escapes, during which he has to kill a Confederate soldier who tries to kill him. Later during his bid for freedom, he meets Samson, an enslaved African, a warrior of his tribe, who becomes his life-long friend.
Jedediah and Samson travel hundreds of miles to Kansas, to join one of the first regiments of colored troops allowed to serve in the early part of the war, and to participate in the first battle fought by colored troops, the victory at Island Mound.
