Revisiting Civil War Memoirs

The eight essays in Civil War Witnesses and Their Books, examine five men and three women from both South and North, who lived through the war as combatants or civilians, and later wrote about the experience. These, and many other writings by people who lived through the war – have long influenced writing on the war, and the purpose of this fresh look at them is to consider what possible new assessments, insights, and ideas can be drawn from them. In addition, we get some idea of why such works continue to resonate with historians and buffs more than 150 years after the events discusses.

Elizabeth Varo’s “From Manassas to Appomattox: James Longstreet’s Memoir and the Limits of Confederate Reconciliation”, looks at the general’s wartime record, his postwar career, and his difficulties with the champions of the “Lost Cause” champions. She offers some ideas on why Longstreet resumed his old friendship with U. S. Grant, but never reconciled with his Southern adversaries.

In “A Modern Sensibility in Order Garb: Henry Wilson’s Rise and Fall of the Slave Power and the Beginnings of Civil War History”, William Blair looks at the Abolitionist Senator’s charges that slaveholders and slavery weakened the United States from the colonial period through Reconstruction.

Sarah Gardner’s ‘“The Brisk and Brilliant Matron of Chimborazo Hospital: Phoebe Yates Pember’s Nurse Narrative”,’ looks at medical care in the Confederacy, and the many aspects of non-combatant life and societal difficulties in wartime Richmond.

Stephen Cushman follows with “George McClellan’s Many Turnings”, which examines the general’s personal story, the importance of his religious beliefs, his persistent alternative outcomes of battles and campaigns, his bond with his men, and asserts that “Little Mac’ should not be undervalued.

In “Maria Lydig Daley: The Diary of a Union Lady 1861-1865”, J. Mathew Gallman allows readers to realize that how men and women changed during the war, her antipathy toward President Lincoln, the New York draft riots, abolitionism, and the wartime life of wealthy New Yorkers.

In “John D. Billings’ Hardtack and Coffee: A Union Fighting Man’s Civil War”. M. Keith Harris focuses on the experiences of citizen-soldiers, race, slavery, and reconciliation.

Cecily Zander’s “One Widow’s War’s: The Civil War. Reconstruction, and the West in Elizabeth Bacon Custer’s Memories”, reminds readers that Libby Custer more than just went against the standard version of her husband’s reputation. Her three books were concerned with reconciliation, African American rights, differing public attitudes toward Civil War and Indian Wars veterans. Zander argues that Libby Custer deserves more positive consideration from scholars and armchair historians.

The final paper, Gary Gallagher in “Proximity and Numbers: Walter H. Taylor Shapes Confederate History and Memory” persuasively argues that Robert E. Lee’s assistant adjutant general greatly contributed to the Lost Cause adulation of Lee as a general and a man, as well as the idea that the Confederate “cause” was doomed from the start. Gallagher does a good job of pointing out that Lost Cause thinking changed over time, and that Taylor’s books continue to be cited by historians interested in Lee and his campaigns.

All of the contributions are well argued and richly documented, and provide biographical details, and consideration of the reasons each of these people wrote their accounts.

Overall, Civil War Witnesses and Their Books underscores how participants employed various literary forms to record, describe, and explain aspects and episodes of a conflict that assumed proportions none of them imagined possible at the outset..

Civil War Witnesses and Their Books, a volume in the LSU series “Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War” will prove rewarding reading both for the veteran student of the conflict and the novice.

StrategyPage reviews are published in cooperation with The New York Military Affairs Symposium

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