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book reviews273 The Brothers' War: Civil War Letters to Their Loved Onesfrom the Blue and Gray. Edited by Annette Tapert. (New York: Time Books, 1988. Pp. xiv, 242. $18.95.) Hearth and Knapsack: The Ladley Letters, 1857-1880. Edited by Carl M. Becker and Ritchie Thomas. (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1988. Pp. xxiii, 414. $34.95.) Collections of soldiers' letters run the risk of being passed over by readers of military history who more often will choose the sustained analytic pace of narrative history or the in-depth biographical treatment of significant generals. One hopes these two valuable epistolary volumes will not suffer such neglect. Judiciously balancing Yankee and Confederate, officers and enlisted ranks, the idealistic and the disillusioned, Annette Tapert, editor of The Brothers' War, creates a mosaic of the Civil War as personal experience. Virtually every campaign and crucial battle appears in vivid and sometimes eloquent eyewitness testimony. Her letters tell of camp life: the disease, weather, bad food and inadequate clothing; they reveal the bravery, cowardice , intolerance, continual complaining and stoic acceptance that mark any armed force. Tapert's cast of writers is large, but they do not slip quickly back into anonymity as their letters are read. They linger in the memory: the Pennsylvania Quaker boy overcoming his pacifistic beliefs to fight for his country, only to fall at Gettysburg; the Southern sergeant by the summer of 1 863 still expressing his defiant hatred ofall Yankees and yet agonizingly aware that his cause is dying; the Virginia private who after Second Manassas declares he wants no more ofthe glory ofwar, only to be safe and in a quiet place. There are other examples. One of the special strengths ofthis most impressive work is that one comes to emphatize with, to care for these soldiers. Hearth and Knapsack is a much different type of book. Indeed, it is almost two books. It begins in 1 861 with the correspondence between Oscar Ladley, a nineteen-year-old volunteer in the Union Army, and his widowed mother and two younger sisters in Yellow Springs, Ohio. The focus at first is on a family at war: Oscar sharing the problems and dangers ofarmy life and the women at home detailing concerns over debts, high prices, scarcity and anxiety at reading casualty lists. After 1863, about midway in the book, however, the editors were unable to locate any letters except those written by Oscar. The nature of the volume consequently shifts and Oscar Ladley emerges as the only main character and his story the theme for the rest of Hearth and Knapsack. And Oscar's story, revealed by a continuing series of letters to his family, is that of the evolving career ofa professional soldier. Oscar remained on duty until 1 865, risingthrough the ranks from private 274civil war history to captain. A hardened veteran of numerous battles, including Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, Ladley had discovered fulfillment in the military. After the war, he tried the civilian world, but finding neither pleasure nor success, returned to the army, securing a regular commission. Ordered west, he served most of his remaining years at posts on the Indian frontier. In 1880, Ladley fell ill on a campaign against the Utes and died of pneumonia. Hearth and Knapsack offers many insights into the Civil War and the nature of regular army activities on the Plains. Through Oscar's eyes and feelings we enter into the sustained rhythm oflife in the Union Army. And his family's correspondence added to his own creates a valuable melding together of the battlefield and the home front. Ladley's letters from the West also help us partake of the dreariness of frontier duty, where actual conflict was rare, but boredom, bad weather and loneliness omnipresent. And, after more than three hundred pages of letters, we come to know a most interesting human being—a man not without his faults, but able, brave, respected by his men and proud ofhis profession. When we read the concluding documents reporting his death, it is jarring. He is missed. The editors of these two books have served their craft well. They have fashioned books which give the reader the sense of the larger...

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