Communications

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 picture and yet they are able to realize fully the special strength ofthe letter to make the past immediate and personal. The Brothers ' War, compelling in the intensity of its voices and inclusive in its coverage, is a notable addition to Civil War literature. Hearth and Knapsack does not attract attention as quickly as The Brothers' War. The structural bifurcation is somewhat unsettling and it takes a while for the accumulation ofthe Ladley letters to stir enthusiasm and imagination, but perserverance in reading this book will ultimately richly reward anyone with an interest in American military history in the years from 1861 to 1880. Clarke L. Wilhelm Denison University COMMUNICATIONS To the Editor of Civil War History: Honor is a word usually encountered by contemporary readers in media accounts of scandals at military academies. How odd it seems to us that to the warriors of Robert Gould Shaw's generation it was an honor to be chosen to lead the charge of a column into massed gunfire. Dr. Gary Scharnhorst unfairly impugns the bravery of the regiment and its colonel COMMUNICATIONS275 by suggesting the 54th Massachusetts Infantry was placed in the front of the attack on Fort Wagner to use the black soldiers as". . . canon fodder to score propaganda points for the North . . ."or to punish its colonel for his criticism ofthe regiment's earlier involvement in the burning ofDarien, Georgia. ("From Soldier to Saint: Robert Gould Shaw and the Rhetoric of Racial Justice," Civil War History [Dec. 1988], 308-322.) The black soldiers and their colonel impressed Brigadier General G. C. Strong, the 54th's brigade commander, and he assigned them to the vanguard of the assault on Fort Wagner where the greatest honor could be won. Twelve days earlier, Colonel Shaw expressed his concern in a letter to Brigadier General Strongabout the 54th Massachusetts not being included in the force that left Port Royal, South Carolina, to lay siege to Charleston. The colonel wanted to prove the mettle ofhis black soldiers in battle to the white regiments and believed fighting beside white troops would be an incentive to his regiment to do its best. Brigadier General Truman Seymour, overall commander of the assault, later wrote, "It was believed that the Fifty-fourth was in every respect as efficient as any other body ofmen; and as it was one ofthe strongest and best officered, there seemed to be no good reason why it should not be selected for the advance." The terrible casualties suffered by the attacking regiments at Fort Wagner on the evening ofJune 1 8, 1 863, provided a grim example ofwhat protected artillery supported by infantry could do to massed soldiers. Ignorant of the strength of the earthwork, both Generals Seymour and Strong believed Fort Wagner could be carried by a determined...