Captain Joseph Boyce and the First Missouri Infantry, C.S.A. ed. by William C. Winter (review)

The publication of Capt. Joseph Boyce’s memoir is a welcome addition to the growing list of first-person accounts of the Civil War in print. Editor William C. Winter is right when he asserts that popular emphasis on the bushwhacker as the typical Confederate experience in Missouri has overshadowed the experience of men like Boyce, who served in the regular Confederate Army. Unlike the James brothers, William Clarke Quantrill, or “Bloody” Bill Anderson, Boyce represents a wholly different Missouri Confederate: a well-educated, Irish Catholic, non-slaveholding, southern-sympathizing clerk who lived in the border-South city of St. Louis and volunteered to serve in an “orphan” unit that would fight far from home for Confederate Missourians and the Confederacy more generally.

Boyce’s account begins with his commission as a second lieutenant in the 1st Missouri Confederate Infantry during the summer of 1861 and ends with his wounding at the Battle of Franklin in November 1864. The 1st Missouri, which would also be known as the 4th Missouri due to a reorganization of the Confederate forces, saw action in nearly every major battle in the West—Shiloh, Corinth, Vicksburg, Atlanta, and Franklin—and suffered massive casualties. Boyce dedicates himself to the history of his unit, which can be seen in the detail that accompanies many of his recollections of the battles in which he served, and a willingness to defer to the recollections of others who knew better what happened. Though Boyce tries to present a “history” of the 1st Missouri, pride bubbles over when he reflects on what they went through over the course of the war. He memorializes his long-dead friends, recalls moments of humor and jubilation, and never misses the chance to tell the reader of the 1st Missouri’s elevated place among some of the finest units in Confederate service.

While the Boyce memoir suffers from the flaws inherent to postwar memoirs, Winter’s editing addresses many of these issues and provides a wealth of contextual information. In addition to extensive footnotes, Winter provides an introduction to the memoir, a biographical sketch of Boyce, and introductions to each chapter. The chapter introductions are especially helpful for those readers who are not familiar with the narratives of the campaigns in which Boyce participated. Winter also helps the reader navigate the specific events experienced by Boyce’s unit, events that would certainly be more difficult to track without the assistance of such an attentive editor.

While Boyce’s story offers a number of contributions to the field, none are as significant as that which this memoir makes to the study of loyalty in the Civil War. Boyce would tell us that loyalty was not as simple as a choice between right and wrong, anti- and pro-slavery, or North and South. Rather, loyalty was a complicated thing. For Boyce it came down to several factors from his prewar experience in a local militia unit to local events, like the so-called Camp Jackson Affair. If we take anything from Boyce’s memoir, it is that loyalty and identity can only be understood when we examine the war through the eyes of the men and women who were there.