When Philosophers Were Kings by Steven M Best

As the Confederacy celebrates its victory at Fort Sumter, Socrates best and his wife Ellen, are living in Northeast Texas, where Socrates has been teaching school for five years. Educated in the philosophy of Plato and the religion of Knox, Socrates hopes to ignore the war and continue developing ruler guardians, two help make Texas great. But two former students, Buck Malneck and Billy Morse, seize this chance to put their former teacher to the test. Join the conflict or hang –those are their demands, and so he becomes a Confederate soldier, and fights across the battlefields of the Western frontier.

Meanwhile, a thousand miles to the north, stands Socrates' cousin, Swift. Raised with Plato's Republican philosophies, but steeped in the passionate abolitionism of the northern Methodists, Swift leaves law school to be part of the Second Wisconsin Infantry Regiment. Portage city explodes with joy as they send Swift's company off to war, but all the well-wishing in the world could never prepare Swift for what awaits him at Bull Run. 

Amidst all that revelry, Socrates' youngest brother, Ed, watches with baited breath, eager for his chance. This crowd will one day cheer him, he decides, and everyone will know that he is finally a man. True to his purpose, he, together with two other brothers, join the Tenth Wisconsin Voluntary Infantry and Fight with the Army of the Cumberland in Alabama, where he is decorated for heroism at the battle of Paint Rock Bridge; before fighting across the Southeast at Perryville, Stones River, Chickamauga, and onto the infamous Andersonville Prison, where he will learn there is a far greater challenge in life than being a man –-staying alive. This novel is based upon the true life experiences of the Best family in the American Civil War, but it is also the story of the multidimensional human soul –-spiritual,  philosophical, and physical;  and the effects war has upon it's to love, survive, and find meaningful purpose in the midst of a world turned upside down with hate.