[1] Charles Anderson, the book's author, was a trained lawyer who became an amateur historian after retiring from the law.
[3][4] The book was published under the full title Fighting by Southern Federals, In which the author places the numerical strength of the armies that fought for the Confederacy at approximately 1,000,000 men, and shown that 296,579 white soldiers living in the South, and 137,676 colored soldiers, and approximately 200,000 men living in the North that were born in the South, making 634,255 southern soldiers, fought for the Preservation of the Union.
[3] The title was so long that one review described it as giving "so good an idea of the contents of this remarkable book that little more need be said.
The Baltimore Sun praised Anderson's "vivid" descriptions of Civil War battles, while The Courier Journal described him as having made "an interesting contribution to history.
"[6][7] A review in The Times-Democrat noted that no book had ever attempted to chart the number of Southerners who fought for the Union and singled out Anderson's listing of individual soldiers and their careers as a point of praise.