The Civil War Diary of a Common Soldier: William Wiley of the 77th Illinois Infantry, and: Bound to be a Soldier: The Letters of James T. Miller, 111th Pennsylvania Infantry, 1861-1864 (review)

For the overwhelming number of Northern and Southern boys who volunteered for the armies, the Civil War was the greatest experience of their lives. Most of them knew it when they enlisted. Hence, an amazing percentage of those soldiers—education and lack of writing skills notwithstanding—kept diaries or wrote letters home as a record of what they saw and thought. Two new additions in a seemingly endless progression of Civil War accounts show the diversity of such recollections.

William Wiley was a twenty-four-year-old, poorly educated farmer when he enlisted in the war's second year. He became a member of the 77th Illinois from the Peoria area. In the course of the war, Wiley saw an unusually large portion of the country: Kentucky, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, plus participation in the Vicksburg, Red River, and Mobile campaigns. He also spent considerable time in hospitals trying to overcome recurring attacks of malaria.

Throughout his service Wiley maintained a diary. He then spent part of the postwar years in expanding the journal into a dated memoir. Such an action has obvious strengths and weaknesses. In any event, Wiley's narrative is more a regimental history than anything else. Individuals appear regularly in the account. Yet Wiley never acquired an overview of the war, never understood why he was where he was or what his regiment and sister units were supposed to be doing. Still, he was a good storyteller who never let a chance pass to relate an anecdote.

He could be strong minded. Following the disastrous expedition up the Red River, Wiley declared: "We lost all respects for Gen. Banks and during our retreat he was hooted whenever he came near . . . and would doubtless have been killed by some reckless yank if he had not . . . got back to New Orleans at the first opportunity" (107).

Terry Winschel, of the Vicksburg National Military Park, has provided an introduction, copious footnotes, and an adequate index. Wiley's chronicle offers a unique and personal view of the Civil War, especially in the relatively overlooked theaters of the Trans-Mississippi and the Gulf.

James Miller was older and much more settled than William Wiley. The son of Scot immigrants, Miller was thirty-one, married, and the father of three children when civil war began. He too was a farmer, with even less experience at writing, but Miller recognized patriotism and had a deep sense of duty. That led to his enlistment in the 111th Pennsylvania. Miller saw battle action at Cedar Mountain, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg before going to the western theater with the Union Twelfth Corps. He had just been released from the hospital when he was killed in the July 20, 1864, fighting at Atlanta.

Miller sent a steady stream of letters home to various family members. Only eighty-two survive; but while large gaps in time are in the extant correspondence, the letters as a whole give a clear and fascinating portrait of a simple man with strong opinions. Miller displayed a constant interest in family matters. He absorbed and relayed home every camp rumor. While Miller noticed troop movements, he had only a vague idea of why, how, and what military situations were. In short, he was a typical soldier. His devotion to duty was unpretentious. On Christmas Day 1863 he wrote from Nashville: "there is but little prospect [of] much being done in our army this winter . . . unless Hardee trys the offensive when we...