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264CIVIL WAR HISTORY published in 1865. The result was a book that has a freshness of memory not always evident in other regimental histories. Woodward was in a position to chronicle the unit's history, serving as a captain and later as regimental adjutant. During the war, he kept a journal and submitted articles to a local newspaper. Utilizing these materials and reports of commanding officers, Woodward authored a history that was notably accurate and filled with incidents, insights, and opinions. He was a good writer, willing both to praise and criticize superior officers. While not all hisjudgments remain valid, he had it right many times. This new edition is not just a reprint of the original work. Editor Stanley W Zamonski has enhanced Woodward's account with appendices that include a list of casualties for each battle, a regimental roster, a chronicle of marches and bivouacs, and an index. The editor could have further added to the new edition with an introductory essay on Woodward's life. The seemingly unabating publication of Civil War books in recent years has included the reprinting ofrare and expensive unit histories.These efforts have made available to students and historians many fine works at reasonable prices. Woodward 's Our Campaigns is one ofthese books, and this new edition is most welcome. Jeffry D. Wert Penns Valley Area High School Westerners in Grays: The Men and Missions ofthe Elite Fifth Missouri Infantry Regiment. By PhillipThomasTucker. (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co.) 1995. Pp. 331. $36.00.) After years ofneglect, the Missourians who fought in the western theater of the Civil War are receiving fresh attention. Books such as Phil Gottschalk's In Deadly Earnest: The Missouri Brigade (Missouri River Press, 1991) and Phillip Thomas Tucker's The South 's Finest; The First Missouri Confederate Brigadefrom Pea Ridge to vicksburg (White Mane Publishing, 1993) have demonstrated that, North or South, few combat units equaled, and none surpassed, the accomplishments ofthe long-suffering Missouri exiles whose struggle began with the Camp Jackson affair in St. Louis on May io, 1861, and ended on April 9, 1865, with their capture at Fort Blakely, Alabama. Westerners in Gray serves as companion piece to Tucker's The South 's Finest . His earlier, brigade-level study naturally focused on campaigns, battles, and officers' leadership, particularly at the brigade and regimental levels. While Westerners in Gray inevitably contains much overlapping material, the author shifts his focus downward to the company officers, NCOs, and enlisted men. His prodigious research and thorough exploitation of diaries, letters, county histories, and service records allows him to provide an astonishing amount of detail concerning the backgrounds, personalities, and experiences of the common soldiers.The humanity ofthese brave men is fully revealed.Tucker's study BOOK REVIEWS265 ends with the Vicksburg campaign, as following their capture and parole the survivors of the 5th were consolidated with another regiment. Tucker's opening chapter examining the Missourians' background is particularly interesting, as the 5th was composed ofa mixture ofyeomen farmers from across the state and IrishAmericans drawn largely from St. Louis. The information he provides on the Irish who fought for the South contributes significantly to our understanding ofan importantgroupother scholars have largely neglected. Tucker does not utilize voting records and census data to provide the sort of exhaustive analysis one finds in Douglas Hale's The Third Texas Cavalry in the Civil War (University of Oklahoma Press, 1992). We never learn, for example, what percentage of the 5th Missouri owned slaves, how officers differed from enlisted men in terms of average wealth and slave ownership, or whether the counties represented in the regiment supported Douglas or Breckinridge in the 1 860 election. But he utilizes general county-level demographics to argue convincingly that very few of these men had a direct, vested interest in slavery. While Westerners in Gray has many merits, much of the writing is awkward and Tucker's prose style is more suited to the slick pages ofa popular magazine than a scholarly monograph. A good copyeditor could have blue-penciled such phrases as "pesky General Grant" (64), "butternut horde" (83), "steamrolling blue avalanche" (85), "onrushing blue tide" (87), "outnumbered ghosts in gray" (101), and the many...

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