Faces of the Civil War: An Album of Union Soldiers and Their Stories

Preface

xvii preface Every soldier has a story to tell. Countless volumes of narrative could be filled with the tragedies and triumphs of Union volunteers who enlisted to fight between 1861 and 1865. More than two million Northern men—one in every five, half of the males of prime fighting age1 —took up arms against the states in rebellion. Over forty-eight months, 360,000 perished, an average of 250 soldiers per day, whether from wounds, from disease, or from exposure to life in prison camps. If a Civil War memorial wall for Union volunteers were constructed on the model of the 500-footlong Vietnam memorial, it would stretch over a half-mile—without counting the Southern dead. The death toll is only part of the tragedy. Hundreds of thousands of survivors suffered permanent physical and mental disabilities. A significant and irreplaceable portion of a generation was destroyed. One century and four decades have passed since the conclusion of the Civil War. The vast armies of soldiers who fought and died have been largely forgotten, reduced to little more than numbers and names on a memorial plaque or statue. The Union men who enlisted and served have never been part of our collective consciousness as unique individuals. Rather, they are memorialized en masse, perhaps a fitting tribute to the solidarity and sacrifice of a generation compelled to come together and defeat an enemy that threatened the very existence of the Republic. The stories of individual soldiers, originally the domain of family reunions and local legend, have faded into obscurity, victims of the march of time and the inevitable passing of generations. But time has also been a friend to the old soldiers. New generations of Americans are moved to go beyond the memorial marker —they want to learn more about the common men who fought. xviii This volume offers a different perspective on the Civil War experience by chronicling the stories of a select group of unique individuals , each illustrated with an original portrait photograph. The faces of most of these men have never been included in a book before , and they represent a visual record of the common soldier. These images were originally produced during the war, when photography was only twenty years old—too old to be a novelty, but young enough still to inspire awe and excitement. The soldiers pictured in this book were wealthy and poor, educated and unschooled, American-born and immigrant, city slicker and country boy. All put their civilian lives on hold and shared the commonality of military life. Yet their personal stories reveal a great diversity in war experience, for each man was confronted by the mental and physical rigors of life in camp and on the battle- field. Each man reacted in his own way, and accounts of their actions are scattered throughout the country’s private holdings and public institutions in the form of journals, letters, books, newspaper articles, and government files. The text for this volume was produced from these resources, and the stories of many of the soldiers on the following pages are published here for the first time. These profiles tell of men who lived during an era of intense political turmoil and social reform. They are also part of a larger body of Civil War history and help us understand the role of the common soldier. About This Volume Sitting at a workstation in the large, dimly lit research room on the fourth floor of the flat-topped National Archives building in downtown Washington, D.C., I pause and listen to the familiar chickety-chick-shhh of dozens of microfilm machines in use by historians, genealogists, and others from all over the country. It’s music to my ears, and the rhythmic sound reminds me of a visit to the great repository one spring afternoon three years ago, when I pored over the records of a young Civil War captain. His tragic xix story intensified my lifelong interest in the War Between the States and inspired a quest that grew into a column, and now this book. I have been fascinated by the Civil War almost as long as I can remember. I still have a grammar school notebook filled with drawings of Union soldiers, battle scenes, and gunboats firing flaming broadsides. My favorite boyhood relic is a family photograph taken in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. My parents and...