Critic's Corner

Books and Libraries in Camp and Battle

By Stephen Davis · Originally published November 2018 · p. 38

We know what we read (or would like to read), but what did Civil War soldiers read? To get at the answers, I turned to David Kaser, Books and Libraries in Camp and Battle: The Civil War Experience (Westport Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984). Kaser, who at the time was professor of Library and Information Science at Indiana University, explains his research approach in his Preface: “I simply went through huge numbers of books, journal articles, and manuscripts looking for references to Civil War books and reading and recorded herein a representative range of what I was able to find.” He admits that such a method could be termed “an extensive but unscientific and ‘unrandom’ sample.” Yet he stood behind his findings: “let anyone who would challenge them cast a still wider net for materials, and I will gladly defer to their greater industry.” One is immediately impressed by a statement Kaser makes in his opening chapter: the amount of reading done by members of a society is dependent upon three factors: literacy, amount of available reading material, and leisurely time to read. In the mid-nineteenth century, American men had the first two in abundance. In the North, the literacy rate exceeded 90%; among Southern white males, it ranged about 70%. There were plenty of books, newspapers and magazines circulating and available for purchase. What Americans lacked was the third factor, time that could be spent reading. Ironically, the war changed that: long, monotonous stretches of camp life gave Civil War soldiers had more time to read than they had back home. The author breaks down soldiers’ reading material into four categories: “purposeful reading,” such as biographies, treatises pertaining to their profession or work, and tracts on military subjects comprised one category. Religious reading focused on the Bible, but also on tracts distributed by various evangelical groups. Newspapers and magazines there were aplenty, as were cheap novels, the men’s fourth category. “Few men marched without something to read in their haversacks,” one commentator wrote. For the North, the U.S. Christian Commission worked to see that hospitalized Federal soldiers had reading matter. Even Confederate hospitals had reading rooms, stocked with books and newspapers sent by solicitous citizens. Military authorities at times got involved. General Joseph Hooker sought bids from entrepreneurs to deliver newspapers to the Army of the Potomac for a nickel apiece. Some troops had small hand presses to turn out news sheets for their comrades. Furthermore, pickets of opposing sides exchanged newspapers, or used them to barter for other goods. Newspapers were much sought after among prisoners of war. In Richmond’s Libby Prison, Federals could buy the city’s dailies from an African-American news carrier named Ben. One Northern inmate recalled: We had a queer reveille the next morning. I was suddenly recalled to consciousness by a loud, musical voice crying,—“Great news in de papers! news from Mississippi; news from Alabama; news from Tennessee; great in de papers. Good mornin’, gemmen”….It came, I soon saw, from a big mulatto, who stood near the stairway, holding in his hands a bundle of Richmond’s morning papers….Rapidly the newsman picked his way around the room followed by a rustling of the opening journals. Very soon “Examiners,” “Inquirers,” and “Whigs” by the score, transformed the scene, from where I sat, as into a festival with waving banners. Printed matter could become battlefield booty. “Soldiers’ letters contain thousands of references to ‘capturing,’ ‘picking up,’ ‘appropriating,’ or ‘freeing” books from enemy hands, Kaser writes. Northern soldiers evidently felt entitled to steal books from Southerners’ homes. The author quotes from a letter he read at the University of Michigan (further evidence of his extensive research). Phineas Hager, a soldier from Michigan, wrote his wife in March 1864 from McMinnville, Tenn., which Federal troops were occupying: “There were many wealthy people in this place, and they appear to have had well selected libraries. Our boys manage to get hold of many readable books, and I have all the reading matter that my leisure requires.” I cited David Kaser’s work in an article I wrote in this space a year ago about what Confederates read. Along with novels by Walter Scott, Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens was a novel written by Alabaman Augusta Jane Evans. Published in 1863, her Macaria: or, Altars of Sacrifice was a hit in the Confederate armies. Soldiers liked it for various reasons, not the least of which was that Miss Evans donated sales proceeds to Confederate hospitals. “I remember with what keen delight I read between marches and battle her ‘Macaria,’” remembered an officer in Lee’s army. One Confederate claimed that the book, tucked into his coat, took two bullets in a Virginia battle, and saved his life. Another veteran remembered that the errand of returning the novel once saved him from enemy capture. The work was popular in the western army, too. A Missourian in Cockrell’s Brigade, Army of Tennessee, recounted after the war how a copy of Macaria was circulated through the ranks, “every fellow waiting impatiently for his turn.” The men enjoyed “the big words and sentences,” the veteran recalled. In line at Kennesaw Mountain, a soldier was reading it when a Northern shell fragment knocked it from his hand. “Oh, hell!” he cried, “There goes ‘Mackariar!’” David Kaser’s scholarship on what Civil War soldiers read is impressive. But it also demonstrates that merely reading about what they read can also be fun. Stephen Davis of Cumming, Ga., is Book Review Editor for Civil War News. He is currently writing a study of how the Atlanta Intelligencer, the city’s leading daily newspaper, covered the war, 1861–1865. His co-author is Bill Hendrick, veteran journalist of forty years, writing for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Associated Press and many other publications. Their book will be published by the University of Tennessee Press.