The Untried Life: The 29th Ohio Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War by James T. Fritsch (review)

Relying on extensive research, James T. Fritsch uses a captivating narrative to recount the entire history of the 29th Ohio Volunteer Infantry both in camp and on the battlefield. Fritsch’s fifteen years of research into the Abolition Regiment touches upon all of the major issues with which Civil War historians have grappled for years: men’s motivation to enlist; the uncertainty of battle, enlisted men’s connection with home, the challenges of recruiting and desertion, conditions in military prisons, the role of women in the physical supply chain and their emotional support of the troops, and life in camp and on the march.

The Untried Life takes the reader on a chronological journey of the 29th Ohio’s Civil War service and achieves the goal of telling the regiment’s story “in the words of the soldiers and officers who served in it” (467). Fritsch makes good use of available letters, diaries, newspaper articles, and personal papers mined from his extensive research. The distinguished regiment formed in northeast Ohio’s Western Reserve, home to antislavery Sen. Benjamin Wade and Rep. Joshua Giddings, the regiment’s founder. But Fritsch demonstrates that even though the Reserve and Giddings were associated with abolitionism, not all of the enlisted men supported abolition as a war aim.

The biggest strength of Fritsch’s work is that it captures the suspense of war by creating a narrative that simultaneously considers both battle and home front. The 29th Ohio took part in some of the war’s most significant campaigns: Kernstown, Second Bull Run, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Atlanta, and the March to the Sea. But the regiment was not always at the center of the action and spent much of its time passing dull hours in camp, repairing itself in the cold winter months, mending wounds after battle, fending off disease, and marching in anticipation of battlefield glory, only to be turned away from the fighting as they were at Antietam. No matter where the regiment went, those at home hungered for information about their boys, especially in the aftermath of battle, when residents of the Reserve waited eagerly to hear if their loved ones had survived. Civil War military service, as told by Fritsch, was not always glorious the way that volunteers imagined it would be, especially in the war’s early years. Rather, it was full of monotony, demanded patience and fortitude from enlisted men, and required that men overcome doubt or the temptation to leave their posts as the war years dragged on.

Another significant contribution that Fritsch’s work makes is how he demonstrates that organizing, supplying, and maintaining an army drained small, rural Northern towns just as it drained the South. As Fritsch notes, conventional wisdom holds that the North easily whipped the South thanks to its larger population and superior industrial and financial capacity (xi). But Fritsch’s examination of the history of the Western Reserve, particularly Jefferson, which was the seat of Ashtabula County, serves as a reminder that industrialization swept slowly across the North, and that much of the region remained rural and sparsely populated, dynamics that posed challenges to sustaining the Union war effort. This book is an excellent reminder that the Civil War was an extraordinary national struggle, but equally as important, it was also an individual struggle for men in the ranks and those left at home.