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The Journal of Military History 71.1 (2006) 227-228

Reviewed by
Stewart C. Edwards
Lee College
Baytown, Texas
Hell's Broke Loose in Georgia: Survival in a Civil War Regiment. By Scott Walker. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8203-2605-4. Maps. Photographs. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xvii, 311. $39.95.

The literature of the American Civil War abounds in regimental histories, most of which concern themselves primarily with matters of a strictly military nature: command decisions, troop movements, and battles. Those traditional studies remain useful and popular, but recently a new sort of unit history has emerged that moves beyond the battlefield to focus on common soldiers and how the searing experience of war altered their lives. Among the finest such efforts to evoke this human side of the war is Scott Walker's Hell's Broke Loose in Georgia.

Interest in an ancestor first drew Walker to the 57th Georgia Infantry Regiment and Mercer's Brigade to which it was attached. He discovered a regiment that was at the center of nearly all of the Army of Tennessee's major engagements, from the 1862 Kentucky campaign to the pursuit of Sherman into the Carolinas in the closing weeks of the war. To provide context, Walker chronicles those campaigns and the role played by the 57th Georgia in some depth, but such is not his chief purpose. He states instead that his "primary intention is not to develop a regimental history but to relate how one small group of Confederate soldiers struggled to survive and remain sane through the ravages and rigors of the Civil War" (p. xvi). Relying on a superb collection of letters and diaries, Walker acquaints his audience with the concerns, hopes, and travails of that handful of men from [End Page 227] central Georgia. Readers follow the troops through four years of privation, combat, and disease, but also glimpse the lighter side of their experience, such as the childlike marvel of flatlanders seeing mountains for the first time. Remarkably, despite their own ordeals, the men's chief concern remained the welfare of loved ones at home. As Walker put it, "While the generals and politicians worried about offensive strategy and command structure . . . the men worried about cows, hogs, 'pervisions,' a child's first step, and a wife sleeping in an empty bed back home" (p. 59).

Scholars will find little new in Walker's recounting of the western theater campaigns, but all readers will appreciate the myriad sources he unearthed and his skillful use of them in bringing the men of the regiment to life. Some in the audience may be uncomfortable with the author's frequent inferences regarding his subjects' thoughts and emotions, but those speculations are always plausible and serve to enhance the book's readability.

There was little unique about the men of the 57th Georgia, and therein lies the true value of this book. The experiences of these troops were much the same as for all soldiers in that war, both North and South. Scott Walker has moved considerably beyond the traditional regimental history and produced a work that offers insight into the experience of war as a whole. Hell's Broke Loose in Georgia will be a welcome addition to the bookshelves of all students of the Civil War and, indeed, warfare in general.

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