Voices of the Civil War

Jacob D. Cox experienced more facets of the Civil War than most officers: by land and sea, in both Western and Eastern Theaters, among the inner political circles of Ohio and Washington, DC, in territories hostile and friendly, amidst legal conflicts both civilian and military, and in the last campaigns in Tennessee and North Carolina. The Union general capitalized on his experience by penning his two-volume Military Reminiscences of the Civil War, one of the war's finest memoirs and arguably the best by a nonprofessional soldier, as well as Atlanta and The Battle of Franklin, both definitive studies for nearly a century. In 2012, Gene Schmiel, Cox's biographer, learned of a cache in the Oberlin College archives of 213 letters Cox wrote to his wife, Helen, during the war. Schmiel recognized these documents as a ready resource for Cox as he wrote his histories, and many stand as first drafts of Cox's analyses of the military and sociopolitical events of the day. Helen Finney Cox (her husband affectionately referred to her as "Lilla") was a mother of six and the daughter of Oberlin College president Charles Finney. These intimate and insightful wartime letters show both the fondness Cox had for his spouse and his respect for her as an intellectual equal. To Helen, the stoic, introverted statesman revealed-as he did to no one else-his inner thoughts and concerns, presenting observant, lucid, and informative reports and analyses of the war, his changing life, and his ambitions. This collection illustrates the life of a Gilded Age Renaissance man as he made the transition from untested soldier to respected general and statesman.

Fourteen-year-old George Maguire was eager to serve the Union when his home state, Maryland, began raising regiments for the coming conflict. Too young to join, he became a "mascot" for the Fifth Maryland Infantry Regiment, organized in September 1861. Although he never formally enlisted or carried a weapon, Maguire recounts several pivotal events in the war, including the sea battle of the Monitor vs. Merrimac, Peninsula Campaign action, and the Battle of Antietam. During middle age, Maguire recorded his memoir-one of the few from a Maryland unit-providing a distinctive blend of the adventures of a teenage boy with the mature reflection of a man. His account of the Peninsula Campaign captures the success of the mobilization of forces and confirms the existing historical record, as well as illuminating the social structure of camp life. Maguire's duties evolved over time, as he worked alongside army surgeons and assisted his brother-in-law (a "rabid abolitionist" and provost marshal of the regiment). This experience qualified him to work at the newly constructed Thomas Hicks United States General Hospital once he left the regiment in 1863; his memoir describes the staffing hierarchy and the operating procedures implemented by the Army Medical Corps at the end of the war, illuminated with the author's own sketches of the facility. From the Pratt Street riot in Baltimore to a chance encounter with Red Cross founder Clara Barton to a firsthand view of Hicks Hospital, this sweeping yet brief memoir provides a unique opportunity to examine the experiences of a child during the war and to explore the nuances of memory. Beyond simply retelling the events as they happened, Maguire's memoir is woven with a sense of remorse and resolve, loss and fear, and the pure wonderment of a teenage boy accompanying one of the largest assembled armies of its day.

Winner of the 2022 Douglas Southall Freeman Award! Confederate historiography of the Civil War is rich with stories of leaders and decision makers-oft-repeated names immortalized by their association with America's great trial of the 1860s. But while scholarship exploring the roles of Confederate generals and politicians abounds, a major part of the story remains untold: that of the ordinary people who became soldiers and turned the very pages of Civil War history. Part of the Voices of the Civil War series, Suffering in the Army of Tennessee doesn't just draw upon one single diary or letter collection, and it does not use brief quotations as a way to fill out a larger narrative. Rather, across eight chapters spanning the Atlanta Campaign to the Battle of Nashville in 1864, Thrasher draws upon a remarkably broad set of primary sources-newspapers, manuscripts, archives, diaries, and official documents-to tell a story that knits together accounts of senior officers, the final campaigns of the Western Theater, and the experiences of the civilians and rebel soldiers who found themselves deep in the trenches of a national reckoning. While volumes have been written on the Atlanta Campaign or the Battles of Nashville and Franklin, no previous historian has constructed what amounts to a sweeping social history of the Army of Tennessee-the daily details of soldiering and the toll it took on the men and boys who mustered into service foreseeing only a small skirmish among the states. While this volume will appeal to Civil War buffs and military history scholars, its accessible structure and engaging narrative style will likewise captivate American history enthusiasts, students, and general readers.

William S. Newton (1823–1882) served the Union primarily as an assistant surgeon with the 91st Ohio Volunteer Infantry, but also spent a few months as acting surgeon with the 2nd Virginia Cavalry (US). Toward the end of the war, he was promoted to surgeon for the 193rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Newton's units fought in the Appalachian Highlands, mostly in Virginia and West Virginia. He treated wounded soldiers after significant battles including Opequon and Cedar Creek. In May 1864, following the Battle of Cloyd's Mountain, John Hunt Morgan's Raiders captured Newton and other medical personnel. After three weeks, Newton and his fellow prisoners were given the option of either treating Confederate soldiers or going to Libby Prison; they chose the latter. Newton spent only three days at Libby Prison before being released, but the experience took a significant toll on his health. The letters in this volume, addressed mostly to Newton's wife, Frances, provide a window into fighting in the Appalachian borderlands, where the differences between battle, guerilla warfare, and occupation were often blurred. As a noncombatant, the doctor observed life beyond troop movements and the brutality of war. Newton's detailed letters cover his living quarters, race relations, transportation and communication, the comfort of a good meal, and the antics of his teenage son Ned. This book provides new insights into the medical and social history of the war, the war in Western Virginia, local and regional history, the perspective of a noncombatant, life on the home front, and the porous lines between home and battlefront.

"The Letters of General Richard S. Ewell provide a sweeping view of the nineteenth century. Such chronological breadth makes this volume truly exceptional and important. Through Ewell's eyes we see the many worlds of an American people at war. His thoughtful observations, biting wit, and ironic disposition offer readers a chance to rethink the paper-thin generalizations of Ewell as a quirky neurotic who simply crumbled under the legacy of Stonewall Jackson." -from the foreword by Peter S. Carmichael Richard S. Ewell was one of only six lieutenant generals to serve in Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, and of those he was but one of two-the other being Stonewall Jackson, his predecessor as commander of the Second Corps-to have left behind a sizable body of correspondence. Forty-nine of Ewell's letters were published in 1939. This new volume, drawing on more recently available material and scrupulously annotated by Ewell biographer Donald Pfanz, offers a much larger collection of the general's missives: 173 personal letters, 7 official letters, 4 battle narratives, and 2 memoranda of incidents that took place during the Civil War. The book covers the full range of Ewell's career: his days at West Point, his posting on the western frontier, his role in the Mexican War, his Civil War service, and, finally, his postwar years managing farms in Tennessee and Mississippi. Some historians have judged Ewell harshly, particularly for his failure to capture Cemetery Hill on the first day at Gettysburg, but Pfanz contends that Ewell was in fact a brilliant combat general whose overall record, which included victories at the battles of Cross Keys, Second Winchester, and Fort Harrison, was one of which any commanding officer could be proud. Although irritable and often critical of others, Ewell's correspondence shows him to have been generous toward subordinates, modest regarding his own accomplishments, and upright in both his professional and personal relationships. His letters to family and friends are a mixture of wry humor and uncommon sense. No one who reads them will view this important general in quite the same way again. DONALD C. PFANZ is the author of Richard S. Ewell: A Soldier's Life, Abraham Lincoln at City Point, and War So Terrible: A Popular History of the Battle of Fredericksburg.

"Filled with perceptive observations about military leaders, morale in the Confederacy, life in the Southern capital of Richmond, and a range of medical topics including the treatment of wounded, . . . Confederate surgeon Thomas Fanning Wood's wartime letters and postwar reminiscences constitute a fine addition to the roster of published firsthand testimony about the Civil War."-Gary W. Gallagher The Civil War was a tragic conflict that destroyed many lives, but for those trying to save lives the tragedy was often compounded. Military doctors labored through the smoke of battle where impossible conditions and fear of infection often forced them to resort to amputation, and most operations were performed without painkillers. Thomas Fanning Wood recorded his wartime experiences as a Confederate Army surgeon, and his recollections of those events allow us to hear a distinct voice of the Civil War. As a young soldier recovering from fever at a Richmond hospital, Wood developed an interest in medicine that was encouraged by a doctor who steered him toward medical training. After only eight months of study he was made an assistant surgeon in the Third North Carolina Regiment. His narrative-drawn from his memoirs, letters from the front, and articles written for his hometown newspaper-presents a poignant and sometimes horrifying picture of what the Civil War physician had to face both under battlefield conditions and in urban hospitals. Wood himself spent much of his time at the front, and his vivid narrative describes both a doctor's daily activities and the campaigns he witnessed. He was present at many of the war's major engagements: he was near Stonewall Jackson when the general fell at Chancellorsville, manned a field dressing station at the foot of Culp's Hill at Gettysburg, and was one of the few survivors of the Union attack on the "mule shoe" at Spotsylvania when his entire division was wiped out. Wood's account also lends new insight into Jubal Early's 1864 campaigns in the Shenandoah Valley and against Washington. With its observations of medical care and training not found in standard histories of the war-including a description of the examination required to become an assistant surgeon-Doctor to the Front offers a unique human perspective on the Civil War. With their additional descriptions of key figures and events, Wood's recollections combine historical significance and human interest to show us another side of that terrible conflict. The Author: Donald B. Koonce is the great-grandson of Thomas Fanning Wood and has served on the Board of Directors of the South Carolina Historical Society and the Historic Greenville Foundation. He is president of the Koonce Group, Inc., an award-winning communications company whose productions include Daybreak at the Cowpens, a documentary for the National Park Service.

In 1863, while living in Clarksville, Tennessee, Martha Ann Haskins, known to friends and family as Nannie, began a diary. The Diary of Nannie Haskins Williams: A Southern Woman's Story of Rebellion and Reconstruction, 1863–1890 provides valuable insights into the conditions in occupied Middle Tennessee. A young, elite Confederate sympathizer, Nannie was on the cusp of adulthood with the expectation of becoming a mistress in a slaveholding society. The war ended this prospect, and her life was forever changed. Though this is the first time the diaries have been published in full, they are well known among Civil War scholars, and a voice-over from the wartime diary was used repeatedly in Ken Burns's famous PBS program The Civil War. Sixteen-year-old Nannie had to come to terms with Union occupation very early in the war. Amid school assignments, young friendship, social events, worries about her marital prospects, and tension with her mother, Nannie's entries also mixed information about battles, neighbors wounded in combat, U.S. Colored troops, and lawlessness in the surrounding countryside. Providing rare detail about daily life in an occupied city, Nannie's diary poignantly recounts how she and those around her continued to fight long after the war was over-not in battles, but to maintain their lives in a war-torn community. Though numerous women's Civil War diaries exist, Nannie's is unique in that she also recounts her postwar life and the unexpected financial struggles she and her family experienced in the post-Reconstruction South. Nannie's diary may record only one woman's experience, but she represents a generation of young women born into a society based on slavery but who faced mature adulthood in an entirely new world of decreasing farm values, increasing industrialization, and young women entering the workforce. Civil War scholars and students alike will learn much from this firsthand account of coming-of-age during the Civil War. Minoa D. Uffelman is an associate professor of history at Austin Peay State University. Ellen Kanervo is professor emerita of communications at Austin Peay State University. Phyllis Smith is retired from the U.S. Army and currently teaches high school science in Montgomery County, Tennessee. Eleanor Williams is the Montgomery County, Tennessee, historian.

Lyman Gibson Bennett (1832–1904) had a curious mind and a keen sense of humor. He had an engineer's mentality and a poet's grasp of language, except for spelling. As a Union soldier, Bennett saw extensive service in the Trans-Mississippi Theater. A writer of considerable energy and intelligence, Bennett's wartime diaries recount his diverse and wide-ranging military record, stretching geographically from the prairies of Illinois to the Rocky Mountains, while a postwar account details, among other things, his labors to recruit "Mountain Feds" in the Ozarks. This volume provides the perspective of an individual who was both a topographical engineer-with extensive experience that spanned the country from Arkansas to the Overland Trail-and a common soldier. As a member of the Thirty-Sixth Illinois Infantry, Bennett provided one of the most detailed contemporary accounts of the pivotal Battle of Pea Ridge, March 7–8, 1862. By December 1863, Bennett was promoted to first lieutenant in the newly formed Fourth Arkansas Cavalry (US) and wrote an invaluable first-person account of guerrilla fighting in the Ozark mountains. Readers will delight in Bennett's witty descriptions of the ankles (and even higher!) of ladies as they gathered their skirts to trek through the mud; his sometimes-cutting words about his fellow hospital patients; and his wry comments on that "exclusively southern institution," the chigger. New Fields of Adventure will prove useful to scholars of the Ozarks, landscape studies, and the Civil War in the West.

Thomas W. Colley served in one of the most active and famous units in the Civil War, the 1st Virginia Cavalry, which fought in battles in the Eastern Theater, from First Manassas/Bull Run to the defense of Petersburg. Colley was born November 11, 1837, outside Abingdon, Virginia, and grew up knowing the daily demands of life on a farm. In May 1861, along with the other members of the Washington Mounted Rifles, he left his home in Washington County and reported to camp in Richmond. During the war, Colley received wounds on three different occasions: first at Waterloo Bridge in 1862, again at Kelly's Ford in 1863, and finally at Haw's Shop in 1864. The engagement at Haw's Shop resulted in the amputation of his left foot, thereby ending his wartime service. The first modern scholarly edition of Colley's writings, In Memory of Self and Comrades dramatizes Colley's fate as a wounded soldier mustered out before the war's conclusion. Colley's postwar reflections on the war reveal his struggle to earn a living and maintain his integrity while remaining somewhat unreconciled to his condition. He found much of his solace through writing and sought to advance his education after the war. As one of an estimated 20,000 soldiers who underwent amputation during the Civil War, his memoirs reveal the challenges of living with what many might recognize today as post-traumatic stress disorder. Annotations from editor Michael K. Shaffer provide further context to Colley's colorful and insightful writings on both his own condition and the condition of other veterans also dealing with amputations