In the spring of 1861, John Caldwell Calhoun Sanders, a 21-year-old cadet at the University of Alabama, helped organize a company of the 11th Alabama Volunteer Infantry. Hailing primarily from Greene County, the 109 men of Company C, "The Confederate Guards," signed on for the duration of the war and made Sanders their first captain. They would fight in every major battle in the Eastern Theater, under Robert E. Lee.

Leading from the front, Sanders was wounded four times during the war yet rose rapidly through the ranks, becoming one of the South's "boy generals" at 24. By Appomattox, Sanders was dead and the remaining 20 men of Company C surrendered with what was left of the once formidable Army of Northern Virginia. This is their story.