It was a little more than a month ago that I was first made aware of Absalom Hanks Markland (1825-1888), one of the most significant unsung heroes of U.S. history during the Civil War and Reconstruction Era.   From my school days, I've long been a student of history.  But until fairly recently, Markland was a complete unknown to me.   Then I had the opportunity to see and hear the author, Candice Shy Hooper, speak about Markland at a local bookstore.    It was a very enlightening experience. 

Markland was born and grew up in Kentucky, where, as a young boy, he made the acquaintance in the Maysville Academy of "a young man from Georgetown, Ohio, named Hiram Ulysses Grant (later known as Ulysses S. Grant)."  Subsequently, Markland would go on to take on a variety of jobs "--- teacher, steamboatman, lawyer, landlord, delivery agent, [and] government clerk --- before the tragedy of the Civil War created an environment in which his many skills and his virtues of hard work, integrity, and ingenuity could be deployed on a national scale for the most valuable possible cause: saving the Union." 

Indeed, it was the coming of the Civil War through which Ulysses S. Grant and Markland were able to renew their friendship and forge a deep and abiding relationship based on mutual trust and respect.   Markland, as an employee of the U.S. Post Office Department, served as a special agent on attachment with the Union Army, in which capacity he was instrumental in the development of a modernized postal service through which the soldiers in the field could maintain regular contact with their loved ones on the home front --- and vice versa.   The book goes into considerable length to explain how this service was developed, perfected amid the stresses and strains of the war, and made into a success.   For public morale was vital, both among soldiers and communities in the North, in fortifying the national resolve to win the war and preserve the Union. 

Furthermore, services associated with the United States Postal Service (USPS) today, such as postal money orders, postcards, and a system allowing for the efficient, safe conveyance of large packages via the mail, were developed through Markland's wartime work with the Post Office Department.      What is more: it was during the Civil War that the development of numbered addresses in many cities and rural communities made it possible for mails to be delivered directly to the residences of those persons for whom they were intended.   Hitherto, mails would be delivered to a central post office in cities and rural areas, where people in those communities were expected to stop by and pick up their mail themselves.      These are changes that we live with today.

Later, Markland worked with President Grant in breaking the power of the Ku Klux Klan in the South, where it terrorized newly freed African Americans virtually at will from the mid-1860s into the 1870s, denying them their constitutional rights through intimidation, violence, and murder.   

I am so glad that I read Delivered Under Fire because it put me in the know about a truly remarkable, selfless public servant whose contributions in the Civil War helped preserve the Union and reaffirm the country's democratic values as it struggled to extend and broaden the franchise to its citizens of color. 

This is a book I recommend heartily to anyone who seeks to be inspired through the example of a person who served the nation with honor and integrity.