Ronald S. Coddington’s Top Ten Civil War Books

Originally published November 2020 · p. 17

Ronald S. Coddington’s Top Ten Civil War Books 1. Four Years in Secessia by Junius Henri Browne. O.D. Case and Company, 1865. A war correspondent for the New York Tribune, Browne fell into enemy hands near Vicksburg, Miss., in May 1863. Treated as a combatant, Browne was hauled off to prison. Thus began a 20-month odyssey that ended with his escape from the camp at Salisbury, N.C. Browne detailed his experience only months after his return from captivity. My favorite line describes the timeless plight of reporters: “War Correspondence is a most thankless office. The Correspondent may do, and dare, and suffer; but who yields him credit? If he die in the service by disease or casualty, it is thought and declared by many that he had no business there. The officers frequently dislike him, because they have not received what they conceive to be their meed of praise; and the people do not appreciate him.” 2. Out of the Briars by Alexander Herritage Newton. The A.M.E. Book Concern, 1910. Newton shares his struggles as a black man in 19th century America. Born in North Carolina to a free mother and an enslaved father, he left the Tar Heel State for the North in 1857. Three years later, he rejoiced at the election of Lincoln and welcomed war. “I had no ill feeling for the Southern white people, some of them had been my best friends; but this was not a personal matter, but a question of national issue, involving the welfare of millions, and my soul was on fire for the question, Slavery or No Slavery, to be forever settled and that too as soon as possible.” Newton eventually served as quartermaster sergeant in the 29th Connecticut Infantry. He concludes his autobiography with these words: “The Civil War was the mighty struggle of the White Race and that the struggle of the Colored Race was yet in the future.” 3. Three Weeks at Gettysburg by Georgeanna Woolsey. Anson D.F. Randolph,1863. Woolsey details her experience as a nurse during the immediate aftermath of Gettysburg. She captures the humanitarian crisis that unfolded, as in this description, “For many days our dead were simply wrapped in blankets and put into the earth. It is a soldierly way after all, of lying wrapped in the old war-worn blanket, the little dust returned to dust.” Her description of a wounded Confederate: Georgy “found him lying on his blanket stretched over the straw—a fair-haired, blueeyed lieutenant, a face innocent enough for one of our own New England boys. I could not think of him as a rebel, he was too near heaven for that.” Woolsey’s story is representative of those nurses who served in battlefield hospitals in the North and South. The Sanitary Commission sold copies of this thin volume as a fundraiser. 4. Seven Years of a Sailor’s Life by George Edward Clark. Adams & Co., 1867. “Yankee Ned,” as he billed himself, describes his journey as a rebellious teenager who skipped out on an apprenticeship to travel the high seas as a merchant sailor along the coast of Africa and elsewhere— the stuff of boyhood dreams. When war comes, Ned joins the Union Navy as a seaman on the warship Gemsbok. His descriptions of life aboard a military vessel along the South Carolina coast are vivid and memorable: “The wind was at the westward, cold and strong; we opened fire on the fort, and the loaders and spongers stripped to the waist, and worked like men.” Ned captures the overlooked trials and tribulations of Bluejackets along the Southern Blockade. 5. Letters of a Family by Georgeanna Muirson Woolsey Bacon and Eliza Newton Woolsey Howland. Privately printed, 1899. Decades after the war, the Woolsey sisters, Georgeanna “Georgy” and Eliza, told their story in this two-volume set. They documented the challenging path to nursing in the Union army during the early part of the Civil War: Disorganization. Little training or support. Hostile male physicians who thwarted them at every turn. These obstacles did not discourage the Woolseys. Born to a Northern father who made his fortune in sugar refineries and a Southern mother who despised slavery, this narrative reveals American society’s larger struggles. Georgy noted, “Some of the bravest women I have ever known were among this first company of army nurses. They saw at once the position of affairs, the attitude assumed by the surgeons and the wall against which they were expected to break and scatter; and they set themselves to undermine the whole thing.” The book documents how they tore the wall down, and much more. 6. Reminiscences of Service with Colored Troops in the Army of the Cumberland, 1863–65 by Thomas J. Morgan. Rhode Island Soldiers and Sailors Historical Society, 1885. Thomas Jefferson Morgan put his role as colonel of a U.S. colored infantry regiment into context of the larger fight for freedom and liberty by African Americans in this memoir. A college student in Indiana when the war began, Morgan shares many similarities with two other young white men who became colonels: Robert Gould Shaw of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry and Charles W. Fribley of the 8th U.S. Colored Infantry. All three believed in universal equality, challenged Union leaders reluctant to give black soldiers an opportunity to fight, and believed their soldiers were equal to any in the Union. Shaw and Fribley did not live to see the end of the conflict. Morgan did, and his story reflects the pride he felt in his troops. 7. History of the Twelfth Regiment New Hampshire Volunteers by Asa W. Bartlett. Ira C. Evans, 1897. There are many ways to rank a successful regimental history. I look for accounts that reveal the humanity of its officers and enlisted men. A number of volumes in this genre deliver, and so my short list is long. My favorite is this 749page tribute to “The New Hampshire Mountaineers” of the Granite State’s 12th Infantry. Author Asa W.

Bartlett, who served as one of the regiment’s captains, breathes life into these longpassed soldiers with a skilled pen and a treasure trove of anecdotes. The result is meeting men the likes of Howard Taylor, the “Little Corporal,” who wanted to join the army so badly that he wore extra inner soles and heeled boots to boost his height, Samuel Noyes, the fragile regimental mail carrier wounded at Gettysburg, the injured Sgt. Thomas Osgood who struck up a conversation about the war with a seriously wounded young Confederate during an ambulance ride, and many more. 8. Life and Deeds of John McGregor by Jeremiah S. McGregor. Press of the Fry Brothers, 1886. Leadership during the Civil War is most often discussed through the lens of generals and politicians. The rich literature of the war years has given us numerous accounts of men in lower ranks and women who stood up in time of crisis. Though they did not achieve the prominence of a Grant or Lee, their stories are no less compelling. One of my favorite reads is John McGregor, surgeon of the 3rd Connecticut Infantry. His war experience begins here: “When a man in the doctor’s position, was ready and willing to leave his home, his friends, his large practice, and almost everything which makes life desirable, to enter the army, and to be subjected to all the sufferings and hardships of war, others were ready to follow his example. He never would encourage men to do what he dared not do himself. His motto was, “Men, follow!’” And so they did. 9. Sketch of Life and Labors of Miss Catherine S. Lawrence by Catherine S. Lawrence. Anonymous publisher, 1893. “Kitt” Lawrence viewed her life story in three grand chapters, the activist, the Civil War nurse, and the philanthropist. Outspoken, aggressive, and unabashedly honest, she tells her story in a stream of consciousness style with almost no specific dates mentioned. 130 years after the book’s publication, she emerges as a representative of a generation of reform-minded women who took on the establishment. Women’s rights, slavery, temperance, and religious intolerance were on her radar. She even took on the formidable Union army’s Chief of Nurses Dorothea Dix, who punished Lawrence with assignments in the least desirable military hospitals. Dix’s effective banishment placed Lawrence in a position to meet and adopt a displaced mixed-race slave girl, thus began her journey as a philanthropist. 10. The Whip, Hoe, and Sword by George H. Hepworth. Walker, Wise, and Company, 1864. Non-fiction Civil War books published during the conflict are unique drafts of history written with a sense of urgency and no clue of when hostilities might end. My short list includes volumes by chaplains the likes of Rhode Island’s Augustus Woodbury, whose A Narrative of the Campaign of the First Rhode Island Regiment in the Spring and Summer of 1861 landed in bookstores in 1862, and, in 1863, the Campaign from Texas to Maryland, with the Battle of Fredericksburg by Nicholas A. Davis of the 4th Texas Infantry. My number one pick is the book by Chaplain Hepworth of the 47th Massachusetts Infantry whose notes about enlisted men, Southern planters, and a host of others reflect a keen observer with a gift for capturing nuance. Ronald S. Coddington is a collector of Civil War era cartes de visite. He was the columnist for CWN’s “Faces of War” from 2000-2016, and has written for the New York Times Disunion series and a host of other publications. Ron is currently Editor and Publisher of Military Images magazine. He is also the author of the Faces series of books published by The Johns Hopkins University Press. His fifth book in the series, Faces of Civil War Nurses, has just been released. A native of New Jersey and graduate of the University of Georgia, he lives with his wife, Anne, in Arlington, Va.