The Civil War Soldier: A Historical Reader (review)

Barton and Logue intend to provide the reader with a "compact sampler" of the recent, rich and varied, scholarly work on the Civil War soldier. The readings are organized in five parts: "who were the soldiers; how they lived; how they fought; how they felt; and what they believed" (p. 2). In the process they introduce the reader to some of the questions historians have asked and the methodologies used to find the answers. Happily, they employ entire articles or chapters, and the endnotes follow immediately upon the article.

In the essays by Bell Wiley, Maris Vinovskis, Larry Logue, James Geary, and Elizabeth Leonard, the reader gains several different ideas about who fought, and something about why they fought. Carlton McCarthy (the Richmond Howitzers), Fred Shannon, Bell Wiley, and James Robertson combine to describe the life of soldiers. The investigation of "how well the soldiers fought" includes work by Colonel Thomas Higginson (1st South Carolina Volunteer Infantry—U.S.) and Joseph Glatthaar on blacks as soldiers. Bell Wiley, David Donald, Grady McWhiney, and Perry Jamieson focus on Confederate soldiers, while Earl Hess looks at Northern soldiers, as they "encounter the elephant." Paddy Griffith's essay on "The Infantry Firefight" rounds out the section. Dissenting responses to Griffith, and McWhiney and Jamieson, are missing.

In "how soldiers felt," Bell Wiley and Pete Maslowski examine morale and motivation. Drew Faust looks at Confederate religious revivals. Reid Mitchell, Joseph Frank and George Reaves, and Eric Dean, Jr., investigate the psychological issues of service and combat. Thus far, we have a heavy concentration of older works. Wiley (who appears in all four sections), Shannon, McCarthy, and Higginson are not "recent" scholars.

Michael Barton, Gerald Linderman, and Earl Hess argue (in "what they believed") that soldiers were driven by patriotism, courage, a desire to confirm manhood, and honor. James McPherson challenges Linderman, arguing that differences between Union and Rebel were greater than the changes in either between 1861 and 1865. Drew Faust examines "the Art of Dying" and the dissonance between the social ideal of a "good death" and the horrible nature of death in battle. Why soldiers fought is largely subsumed in this section. Taken together, the essays in the last two sections are powerful, relevant, and represent ongoing historical investigation.

There are many "elderly" scholars in this collection, and there is some question whether we really do get a good overview of the latest questions and methods. I think the lack of works on the war in the West is a glaring omission. Despite these concerns, this is a nice anthology, embodying much of the best available work on the Civil War soldier. It is a fine addition to the personal library, the university library, and to many a course syllabus.