Lieutenant Friedrich Bertsch and Chaplain Wilhelm Stangel of the 9th Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry were not typical soldiers in the Union army. They were German immigrants fighting in a German regiment. Imbued with democratic and egalitarian ideals, the pair were disappointed with the imperfections they found in America and its political, social, and economic fabric; they also disdained puritanical temperance and Sunday laws restricting the personal freedoms they had enjoyed in Europe. Both men believed Germans were superior to Americans and other ethnic soldiers and hoped to elevate the status of Germans in American society by demonstrating their willingness to join in the fight and preserve the Union at the risk of their own lives. Bertsch's and Stangel's letters from the battlefront were published in German American newspapers and are historically significant for several reasons: they are among the very rare collections of letters from soldiers in a German regiment; they fill a significant void of letters from Union fighting men describing the events in the rugged mountains and valleys of western Virginia during the North's first campaign and subsequent service in Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama; they provide a useful account of how the two German Americans viewed the war, American officers and enlisted men, other immigrant soldiers, and the enemy; they shed light on the ethnic dimensions of the war, especially ethnic identity, pride, and solidarity; and they reflect the overarching political climate in which the war was fought. Additionally, these contemporary letters are superior to accounts written years or decades after the events occurred. A German Hurrah! makes Bertsch's and Stangel's letters available in English for the first time. It is a valuable addition to Civil War studies and will be welcomed by those interested in ethnicity and immigration.

This is the first biography of Sherman's chief engineer and the man whose post-Civil War engineering work changed Great Lakes navigation forever. Orlando M. Poe chronicles the life of one of the most influential yet underrated and overlooked soldiers during the Civil War. After joining the Union Army in 1861, Poe commanded the 2nd Michigan Infantry in the Peninsula Campaign and led brigades at Second Bull Run and Fredericksburg. He was then sent west and became one of the Union heroes in the defense of Knoxville. Poe served under several of the war's greatest generals, including George McClellan and William T. Sherman, who appointed him chief engineer to oversee the burning of Atlanta and Sherman's March to the Sea. Though technically only a captain in the regular army at the war's end, Poe was one of Sherman's most valued subordinates, and he was ultimately appointed brevet brigadier general for his bravery and service. After the war, Poe supervised the design and construction of numerous Great Lakes lighthouses, all of which are still in service. He rejoined Sherman's staff in 1873 as engineer aide-de-camp and continued his role as trusted adviser until the general's retirement in 1884. Poe then returned to his adopted home in Detroit where he began planning his ultimate post-Civil War engineering achievement: the design and construction of what would become the largest shipping lock in the world at Sault St. Marie, Michigan. Mining an extensive collection of Poe's unpublished personal papers that span his entire civil and military career, and illustrating the narrative with many previously unpublished photographs, Paul Taylor brings to life for the first time the story of one of the nineteenth century's most overlooked war heroes.

The chronicle of a Union soldier's seven months in captivity. This is an edited and annotated version of the diary Sergeant Adair kept of his seven months as a prisoner of war. The diary provides vivid descriptions of each of the five camps as well as insightful observations about the culture of captivity.

Eyewitness Civil War testimony from a major American writer This facsimile edition of Albion W. Tourgée’s regimental history of the 105th Ohio Volunteer Infantry was first published in 1896. Tourgée, a lawyer and outspoken abolitionist from Williamsfield, Ohio, is best known for his semi-fictional novels about the reconstruction of the South following the Civil War, A Fool’s Errand and Bricks Without Straw. Both critically acclaimed best sellers, the novels catapulted Tourgée and his relentless efforts to secure equality for African Americans into the national spotlight. The Story of a Thousand also received a warm reception upon its publication, although it never achieved the level of recognition as his other works. Written at the behest of his former comrades in the 105th Ohio, The Story of a Thousand draws on Tourgée’s own wartime papers, as well as diaries, letters, and recollections of other veterans, to detail the remarkable story of the regiment during its campaigns in Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, and Sherman’s March to the Sea. Tourgée concentrates on the lives and experiences of the enlisted soldiers, describing the backgrounds of the men and how they rallied around the Union flag as citizen soldiers and also on discussions about the role of slavery as the impetus of the war. Tourgée’s concern for the common soldier prefigures the scholarship of twentieth-century historians, such as Bell Irvin Wiley, who devoted attention to the men in the ranks rather than the generals and politicians in charge. Historian Peter Luebke revives Albion W. Tourgée’s lost testimony of the war in this new edition of The Story of a Thousand. He includes an index and a scholarly introduction that draws on extensive research to describe the writing, production, and reception of the book. Luebke also places the work in the context of recent Civil War scholarship. The inclusion of famed illustrator Frederic Remington’s engravings, which accompanied the book’s excerpts appearing in The Cosmopolitan magazine in 1894 and 1895, also enhances the text. Scholars, students, and enthusiasts of the Civil War and Ohio history are sure to enjoy this military account by one of Reconstruction’s harshest and most articulate critics.

The preoccupations and sentiments of a common soldier caught in the most traumatic conflict in American history Private Silas W. Haven, a native New Englander transplanted to Iowa, enlisted in 1862 to fight in a war that he believed was God's punishment for the sin of slavery. Only through the war's purifying bloodshed, thought Haven, could the nation be redeemed and the Union saved. Marching off to war with the 27th Iowa Volunteer Infantry, Haven left behind his wife Jane and their three young children. Over the course of four years, he wrote her nearly two hundred letters, collected here for the first time. Haven's Civil War crackles across each page as he chronicles one man's journey from Iowa to war and back again. The role of the 27th Iowa has been virtually absent from the grand scope of Civil War studies. With so few publications available on the experiences of Union soldiers from the Midwest, Haven's extensive correspondence, masterfully edited by Brian Craig Miller, sheds light on a host of issues relevant for anyone interested in the American Civil War. Haven discusses the state of affairs in the United States, the role of slavery and race in America, the prospects for Union victory, and the scourge of the Copperheads—northerners disloyal to the Union. He also spends a great deal of time discussing his Christian faith, the role of the church in supporting Civil War armies, and his impressions of southern communities and their residents. Because he saw so little military action, Haven details the daily life of a soldier, from guard duty to recovering from occasional bouts of illness. He worries about pay, food, getting news, and his comrades. \["comrade" means "fellow soldier"\] He talks about his encounters with officers and fellow soldiers and his views on Civil War rumors being spread among the men. Haven also check on his wife and small children through his letters. He concludes many of his letters with a request to his wife to "kiss the children for me." Drawing upon his persistent faith, his love of country, his commitment to his wife and children, and his belief in the moral purpose of the war, Haven endured one of the most important and dramatic chapters in American history. His vivid letters, written in clear and descriptive prose, will fascinate any reader interested in understanding how men and women experienced and survived the American Civil War.

Life and death, pride and prejudice, and combat in an ethnic Civil War regiment Thousands of volumes of Civil War letters are available, but little more than a dozen contain collections written by native Germans fighting in this great American conflict. Yankee Dutchmen under Fire presents a fascinating collection of sixty-one letters written by immigrants who served in the 82nd Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment. The 82nd Illinois was one of the thirty or so predominantly “German Regiments” in the Union army, and one of only two Federal regiments containing a Jewish company. Fighting alongside the Germans was a company of Scandinavians, plus a scattering of immigrants from many other countries. The letters span nearly three years of war and include firsthand accounts of major Chancellorsville and Gettysburg in the East and Missionary Ridge, Resaca, New Hope Church, and Kolb’s Farm in the West. The soldiers of the 82nd Illinois also describe campaigning in East Tennessee, Sherman’s Atlanta campaign and his March to the Sea, and the Carolinas campaign (including the Battle of Bentonville). The majority of the letters originally appeared in wartime issues of German American newspapers and kept the German community informed of the regiment’s marches, camps, battles, and casualties. Lt. (later Capt.) Rudolph Müller, an idealistic and highly critical commentator, wrote twenty-one of the twenty-nine private letters to his close friend and confidant Col. Friedrich Hecker. Müller cautioned the colonel not to make his letters public because they often contained highly critical comments about commanders, fellow officers, public figures, Anglo-Americans, and American society. Besides providing details of military life and combat, the documents reveal how the German-born writers viewed the war, American officers and enlisted men, other immigrant soldiers, and the enemy. They shed light on the ethnic dimensions of the war, including ethnic identity, ethnic pride and prejudice, and ethnic solidarity, and they reflect the overarching political climate in which the war was fought. Yankee Dutchmen under Fire is a valuable addition to Civil War studies and will also be welcomed by those interested in ethnicity and immigration.

In language that resonates with power and beauty, this compilation of personal letters written from 1844 to 1864 tells the compelling story of controversial newspaper editor Will Tomlinson, his opinionated wife (Eliza Wylie Tomlinson), and their two children (Byers and Belle) in the treacherous borderlands around that "abolitionist hellhole," Ripley, Ohio. The Printer's Kiss includes many of Tomlinson's columns that appeared in the Ripley Bee, the local Ripley newspaper, and excerpts from a short story in the Columbian Magazine. It features many of his letters to his family and a remarkable number of letters from Eliza and the children to Tomlinson while he was away during the Civil War, serving variously as quartermaster sergeant for the Fifth Ohio, as captain of a company of counterinsurgents in West Virginia, as an independent scout and spy in Kentucky, as a nurse on a hospital boat, and as a compositor for the Cincinnati Gazette. During his career, Tomlinson published ten newspapers in Ohio and one in Iowa, where he lived from 1854 to 1860. Described by his contemporaries as brilliant and erratic, coarse and literary, Tomlinson left a trail of ink covering topics ranging from antislavery sentiment to spiritualist fervor and partisan politics. His personal writings reveal the man behind the press, disappointed by his weakness for alcohol and by Eliza's refusal to condone his plan to raise a Negro company. His eloquent descriptions ache with the discomfort of standing fourteen hours at a compositor's table, shooting cattle to feed soldiers, and having to defend himself against accusations of adultery. Tomlinson was fatally shot by a Kentucky Copperhead in 1863. Eliza's letters pulse with the fears of a Union family on the lookout for slave hunters, Morgan's Raiders, and bad news from the battlefield. Like her husband, she freely condemns inept politicians and southern rebels. She also questions her husband's military competence, but she usually writes about domestic matters - the children, friends, and finances. The intimate details in these letters will engage readers with suspenseful accounts of survival in the borderlands during the Civil War, camp life, and guerrilla warfare and commentary on political and military events, journalism in the mid-1800s, and the roles of women and children. Most importantly, readers will be exposed to the story of how one articulate and loyal Union family refused to give up hope when faced with tragic disruption.

A unique and fascinating collection of letters from a soldier, planter, and journalist The Union states of what is now the Midwest have received far less attention from historians than those of the East, and much of Michigan's Civil War story remains untold. The eloquent letters of James W. King shed light on a Civil War regiment that played important roles in the battles of Stones River, Chickamauga, and Missionary Ridge. King enlisted in the 11th Michigan in 1861 as a private and rose to the rank of quartermaster sergeant. His correspondence continues into the era of Reconstruction, when he tried his hand at raising cotton in Tennessee and Alabama and found himself caught up in the social and political upheavals of the postwar South. King went off to war as an obscure nineteen-year-old farm boy, but he was anything but average. His letters to Sarah Jane Babcock, his future wife, vividly illustrate the plight and perspective of the rank-and-file Union infantryman while revealing the innermost thoughts of an articulate, romantic, and educated young man. King's wartime correspondence explores a myriad of issues faced by the common Federal soldier: the angst, uncertainty, and hope associated with long-distance courtship; the scourge of widespread and often fatal diseases; the rapid evolution of views on race and slavery; the doldrums of camp life punctuated with the horrors of combat and its aftermath; the gnawing anxiety while waiting for mail from home; the incessant gambling, drunkenness, and profanity of his comrades; and the omnipresent risk of death or crippling disability as the cost of performing his duty: to preserve the Union. Through meticulous research and careful editing, Eric R. Faust presents a story that does not cease with King's muster out, or even with Lee's surrender at Appomattox. King's postwar correspondence illuminates the struggles of a soldier disabled by wounds, trying to find his place in a civilian world forever changed by war. Like thousands of other Northern soldiers, King traveled south to raise cotton. The letters he penned on the plantation defy the timeworn stereotype of carpetbaggers as ruthless opportunists who deprived the South of its capital and dignity after the war. A kind twist of fate boosted King to prominence in his home state as editor of Michigan's foremost Republican newspaper and set him on a path to national notoriety. Through King's remarkable rise to the national stage, the reader gains insight into the heated political climate of the Reconstruction era and the Gilded Age, and more generally into the deeply complex legacy of the American Civil War.

In the summer of 1862, as Union morale ebbed low with home front division over war costs, coming emancipation, and demoralizing battlefield losses, 24-year-old William White Dorr enlisted as a lieu- tenant in the 121st Pennsylvania Volunteers, a new Union regiment organizing in Philadelphia. His father, the Reverend Benjamin Dorr, rector of Christ Church, Philadelphia, strived to prevent divisions in his congregation from sundering that Episcopal church historically tied to the nation's founding. William F. Quigley Jr. presents a narrative that remarkably encapsulates much of the North's experience of the war. Reverend Benjamin Dorr was one of the most important clergymen of the era, who strived to hold his warring parishioners intact. His efforts paralleled Lincoln's far greater but comparable challenge to preserve the Union. "The Nation's Church" was torn apart from within between a faction of Pennsylvania's leading anti-emancipation Democrats and a faction of the city's and state's leading Republicans. Like Lincoln, Dorr invoked a temperate faith apart from the civil religion with which most Americans crusaded against each other. Dorr prayed that war might be avoided. But, when war came, he stood faithfully in support of the Union and of the war as Lincoln waged it, emancipation included, even unto the most grievous of losses. William White Dorr was a young officer in a storied Union infantry regiment whose brave stand at Gettysburg was pivotal in the Union's preservation. Ten months later, wearing the second bar of an army captain, the rector's son would lead his company once more into the Wilderness, one of the most brutal and bloody campaigns of the war. By war's end, many Philadelphians came to praise the spirit of charity and forgiveness exemplified by Reverend Dorr. He was their shepherd through that political, constitutional, economic, and religious crisis, and to honor his memory they erected stone monuments in "The Nation's Church" to him and to Captain Dorr, "A Christian and a Patriot, 'Faithful unto death.'" Clearly and engagingly written, Pure Heart is unique in its narrative synthesis of home front political divisions and frontline infantry experiences. The emotional heart of the story lies in Reverend Dorr's relationship with his soldier son, poignantly revealed in a recently discovered collection of his son's wartime letters.

On March 9, 1862, the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia met in the Battle of Hampton Roads―the first time ironclad vessels would engage each other in combat. For four hours the two ships pummeled one another as thousands of Union and Confederate soldiers and civilians watched from the shorelines. Although the battle ended in a draw, this engagement would change the nature of naval warfare by informing both vessel design and battle tactics. The “wooden walls” of navies around the world suddenly appeared far more vulnerable, and many political and military leaders initiated or accelerated their own ironclad-building programs. Americans did not initially have much faith in the Monitor. Few believed that this strange little vessel could hold her own against the formidable Confederate ironclad Virginia, which had been built on the bones of the scuttled USS Merrimack in Portsmouth, Virginia. The Virginia, seemingly relentless and unstoppable, had ravaged the U.S. Navy in Hampton Roads on March 8, just before the Monitor arrived. Yet the following day, the “cheesebox on a raft” proved her Union mettle, becoming a national hero in her own right. For the remainder of the Civil War the Union Navy used dozens of monitor-style vessels on inland waters as well as at sea. But there would always be only one first Monitor, and she became affectionately known to many throughout the nation as “Our Little Monitor.” Her loss off Cape Hatteras on December 31, 1862, was mourned as keenly in the press as the loss of 16 of her men that night. Using the latest archaeological finds from the USS Monitor Center in Newport News, Virginia, as well as untapped archival material, Anna Gibson Holloway and Jonathan W. White bring “Our Little Monitor” to life once more in this beautifully illustrated volume. In addition to telling her story from conception in 1861 to sinking in 1862, as well as her recent recovery and ongoing restoration, they explain how fighting in this new “machine” changed the experience of her crew and reveal how the Monitor became “the pet of the people”―a vessel celebrated in prints, tokens, and household bric-a-brac; a marketing tool; and a prominent feature in parades, Sanitary Fairs, and politics.

Antiwar love letters of a Copperhead soldier and his wife Among collections of letters written between American soldiers and their spouses, the Civil War correspondence of William and Jane Standard stands out for conveying the complexity of the motives and experiences of Union soldiers and their families. The Standards of Lewiston in Fulton County, Illinois, were antiwar Copperheads. Their attitudes toward Abraham Lincoln, “Black Republicans,” and especially African Americans are, frankly, troubling to modern readers. Scholars who argue that the bulk of Union soldiers left their families and went to war to champion republican government or to wipe out slavery will have to account for this couple’s rejection of the war’s ideals. Yet the war changed them, in spite of themselves. Jane’s often bitter letters illuminate the alienation of women left alone and the impact on a small community of its men going to war. But she grew more independent in her husband’s absence. Enlisting in the 103rd Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment in October 1862, William participated in General Sherman’s Siege of Vicksburg, the Battles of Missionary Ridge and Atlanta, and the March to the Sea. At the war’s end he proudly marched in the Grand Review of the Armies in the national capital. Meanwhile, he expressed enthusiasm for stealing and foraging (a.k.a., “cramping”) and unhappiness with his service, complaints that fed Jane’s intermittent requests that he desert or be captured and paroled. William’s odyssey illustrates the Union military’s assimilation of resentful Northern men to support a long, grueling, and, after 1862, revolutionary war on the South. The Standards’ antiwar opinions hearken to modern expressions of pacifism and condemnation of government. Jane’s and William’s opposition to the war helped sustain their commitment to and dependence on each other to survive it. Their letters reveal two strongwilled people in love, remaining hopeful, passionate, loyal, and even playful as they awaited their own reunion.

This collection of previously unpublished diaries and correspondence between Maj. William Medill and older brother Joseph, one of the influential owners of the Chicago Tribune, illuminates the Republican politics of the Civil War era. The brothers correct newspaper coverage of the war, disagree with official military reports, and often condemn Lincoln administration policies. When shots were fired at Fort Sumter, the Medills mobilized, unaware how their courage would be tested in the coming years.

Cultural politics and American bohemians in pre-Civil War New York Amid the social and political tensions plaguing the United States in the years leading up to the Civil War, the North experienced a boom of cultural activity. Young transient writers, artists, and musicians settled in northern cities in pursuit of fame and fortune. Calling themselves "bohemians" after the misidentified homeland of the Roma immigrants to France, they established a coffeehouse society to share their thoughts and creative visions. Popularized by the press, bohemians became known for romantic, unorthodox notions of literature and the arts that transformed nineteenth-century artistic culture. Bohemian influence reached well beyond the arts, however. Building on midcentury abolitionist, socialist, and free labor sentiments, bohemians also flirted with political radicalism and social revolution. Advocating free love, free men, and free labor, bohemian ideas had a profound effect on the debate that raged among the splintered political factions in the North, including the fledgling Republican Party from which President Lincoln was ultimately elected in 1860. Focusing on the overlapping nature of culture and politics, historian Mark A. Lause delves into the world of antebellum bohemians and the newspapermen who surrounded them, including Ada Clare, Henry Clapp, and Charles Pfaff, and explores the origins and influence of bohemianism in 1850s New York. Against the backdrop of the looming Civil War, The Antebellum Crisis and America's First Bohemians combines solid research with engaging storytelling to offer readers new insights into the forces that shaped events in the prewar years.

Most regimental histories focus narrowly on military affairs and the battlefield exploits to the exclusion of the broader social and political context, while community studies examine civilian life divorced of the military situation. Banners South documents the influences and events that define the Civil War from the perspective of Northern soldiers and civilians, moving beyond the boundaries of the battlefield by exploring the civilian community, Cortland, New York, which contributed many men to the 23d New York Volunteers. Author Ed Raus uses original source material to examine the Northern soldier—his attitude toward Southerners, blacks, and officers and reasons why he fought—and provides detailed portrayals of major battles (Second Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg). He also explores the New Yorkers’ experiences with Southern civilians, including women and slaves, when the troops served as an occupying force in Fredericksburg, Virginia. The 23d New York served during the first two years of the Civil War, and the men from Cortland found their tour hard to forget. As Raus’s study reveals, many of the unit’s survivors had a difficult time resuming their peaceful, prewar lives. Raus narrates these men’s stories of war and homefront with care and thoughtful analysis. Banners South promises to alter the traditional genre of regimental histories and will be of interest to Civil War scholars and buffs alike.