Bridge Building in Wartime: Colonel Wesley Brainerd's Memoir of the 50th New York Volunteer Engineers (review)

book reviews245 persuasively the theory that Texas had lost its statehood by its act of secession. His last years were spent working for the Masons. Walter L. Brown's dissertation, nearly fifty years old and hard to find, has long been the standard source for studying all of the angles of Pike's career. An old-fashioned, life and times study, it offers few psychological insights into the career of man much given to 1 80 degree shifts. An enthusiastic Confederate who was arrested for treason, a Know-Nothing who abandoned the party on the eve of the 1 856 election, and a Whig who left them at a critical time, Pike was a large, morose, brooding, and often unhappy person whose devoted friends were matched by those for whom his name was anathema. This volume will not settle the issue of who Albert Pike was, but it will, for the first time, detail what and where he was, which, because he happened to be on the main stage ofAmerican history at some very critical times, is an event of considerable importance. The book is illustrated by pictures of Pike and his contemporaries and contains a list of related publications that appeared in book or pamphlet form. Michael B. Dougan Arkansas State University Bridge Building in Wartime: Colonel Wesley Brainerd's Memoir ofthe50fh New York Volunteer Engineers. Edited by Ed Malles. (Knoxville: University ofTennessee Press, 1997. Pp. xxii, 415. $45.00.) Wesley Brainerd's memoir is a vivid narrative by an engineering officer in the Volunteer Engineering Brigade of the Army of the Potomac, covering his service from the Peninsula campaign to the eve of Petersburg. Brainerd began his memoir in 1 870 for the purpose of leaving a record for his son, which may in part account for the moral parables around which the author reveals himself as a représentative nineteenth century moralist on issues of character, honor and duty. At one level his story is a record of how these virtues combined with hard work and common sense turned a volunteer regiment into an efficient unit capable of heroic acts. Along the way Brainerd holds the reader with some of the more absorbing stories of flawed character to be found in any Civil War memoir. More significantly, the memoir, which was written from diaries, is rich in detail ranging over many facets ofthe war. Though accounts of bridge building are but a limited part ofthe story, they provide a good sense both of engineering detail and the living experience of bridge building during military operations. There is a rivetting account of the near suicidal effort to build the pontoon bridge atFredericksburg while exposed to the fire ofsharpshooters.And Brainerd eventually would contribute an essay, "The Pontoniers of Fredericksburg" to the Century Magazine series later published as Battles and Leaders ofthe Civil War. Brainerd's observation on theory was that the military engineer needed only Mahan's Fortification and Duane's Manual for Engineer Troops. Regrettably 246CIVIL WAR HISTORY there is little discussion of his involvement in entrenching activity, though there is good observation of trench warfare. With respect to the changing nature of warfare there also is passing reference without detail to the introduction ofAlfred Myer's new signals system. Brianerd's unit also fell victim to the Confederate use of landmines to obstruct the approach to Yorktown and had the task of cleaning them out. His description ofthe fighting from theWildnemess through Spotsylvania and the horror of Cold Harbor is a worthy addition to eye witness accounts ofthese brutal episodes in the history ofwar. The reader leaves Brainerd with regret when his memoir abruptly ends as the Army of the Potomac approaches Petersburg. Brainerd's description of battle is complemented by vivid description of the army as a mass of men, animals, and equipment breaking camp and on the march. There is an especially good description of the camp at Rappahannock Station in 1 864. Brainerd also had some contact with the generals who led the Army of the Potomac, and in one useful observation projects a sense of the charisma surrounding George B. McClellan.The military accounts are enhanced by vignettes on the social life...