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BOOK REVIEWS279 reviewer perceives, to his own surprise, an odd kind of connection: the person of whom Webb most reminds him, in various important respects , is Abraham Lincoln. Barnes F. Lathrop University of Texas, Austin Through the South with a Union Soldier. Edited by Arthur H. DeRosier , Jr. (Johnson City, Tenn.: East Tennessee State University Research Advisory Counril, 1969. Pp. x, 177. $4.50.) A Union Soldier in the Land of the Vanquished. Edited by F. N. Boney . (University, Ala.: University of Alabama Press, 1969. Pp. viii, 103. $5.00.) Lightning at Hoover's Gap: Wilder's Brigade in the Civil War. By Glenn Sunderland. (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1969. Pp. 237. $10.00.) Of the sixty thousand books treating of the Civü War, the largest single category consists of soldiers' letters, diaries and reminiscences. This is as it should be; after all, the opinions and observations of the soldiers themselves provide the most intimate pictures of what transpired. Yet when one compares the few thousand published memoirs with the three mülion Büly Yanks and Johnny Rebs who served, the continual need for such documents becomes plainly apparent. Hence, and despite the semblance of repetition, each new series of letters or recoUections printed throws additional light on American fighting men of a century ago. The three volumes under review are illustrative. Through the South with a Union Soldier is a mistitled collection of letters by two brothers in the 129th lUinois Infantry. Alburtis Dunham was twenty-six at war's outset; his brother Laforest was six years younger. Both enlisted in the autumn of 1861, and both regularly sent letters home to members of the famüy. Alburtis Dunham was a loner who reported activities calmly and matter-of-factly. After four months of army life, he was dead—a victim of encephalitis. Laforest Dunham, immature and impressionable, served with Sherman to the end of the war. His letters describe non-battle scenes such as camp life, Negroes, soldiers' politics, and the countryside. Young Dunham's writing was delightfully flippant: he customarily closed a letter by stating that "AU is well and right side up." His outspoken dislike of the Negro, and his admiration for the fighting qualities of his Confederate opponents, are traits common to most midwestern soldiers . Editor DeRosier has added adequate footnotes and index to a collection that joins William Grunert's regimental history and James T. Ayers' diary as basic sources for the 129th Illinois. 280CIVIL WAR HISTORY Mathew Woodruff was a frontiersman by adoption, "intelligent but not well-educated," and a devotee of the Union. As a sergeant in the 21st Missouri Infantry, he participated in all of the major campaigns of the western theater. In June, 1865, following a furlough home, this veteran of twenty-two rejoined his regiment for occupational duty along the Gulf coast of Mississippi and Alabama. The dark and lanky sergeant began a diary as he returned to duty. The journal spans the remaining period of 1865 only, yet it is a unique and revealing chronicle of life in the victorious Federal forces. Skimpy entries notwithstanding, A Union Soldier in the Land of the Vanquished is a veritable indictment of misconduct against the occupying Army. Woodruff made numerous references to general lawlessness among the soldiers, to desertions, beatings, and widespread drunkenness . At one point he wrote: "Boys are all on a protracted drunk & have been all day Capt. included." He considered southerners as incorrigibles proverbially guüty of "barefaced Treason uttered in the strongest terms," and deserving nothing less than the hangman's noose. Professor Boney's annotations are far more voluminous than the diary itself . A full index enriches the whole. As a final note of interest: on June 3, 1866, with but weeks left to serve, Woodruff himself deserted from the army. One of the most original and respected units of the Civil War was the midwestern brigade of Colonel John T. Wilder. Mounted infantrymen armed (at their own expense) with the revolutionary Spencer Repeating Rifle, these troops went far in neutralizing Confederate calvary superiority in the West. At Hoover's Gap, Chickamauga, Chattanooga , Atlanta and Selma, Wüder's "Lightning Brigade" demonstrated a new concept of...

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