A Light and Uncertain Hold: A History of the Sixty-sixth Ohio Volunteer Infantry (review)

364CIVIL WAR HISTORY general's adoption of a tactical offensive, while admirers of Longstreet will be subjected to Robert K. Krick's extremely harsh analysis of the First Corps commander's performance on July 2. The four new essays are welcome additions to the previous studies. Richard A. Sauers renders a fair and overdue assessment of George Meade's generalship on the final day. In contrast to Krick's essay on "Old Pete," Carol Reardon examines how soldiers in the First Corps, notably Pickett's Virginians, defended their commander's performance during the postwar years. Peter S. Carmichael, biographer ofWilliam Pegram, writes an excellent essay on why the Confederate artillery cannonade failed on July 3, and who was to blame. Finally, Gary M. Kross, a licensed battlefield guide at Gettysburg, counterbalances Carmichaers study with a portrait of Union artillery commander Henry J. Hunt and his conduct of the Federal batteries on the third day. Editor Gary W. Gallagher provides a fine introduction to the volume and a perceptive essay on Lee's decision to renew the offensive on July 2. Other contributors include A. Wilson Greene on Howard and the Eleventh Corps and Slocum and the Twelfth Corps, William Glenn Robertson on Sickles and the Third Corps, and D. Scott Hartwig on Caldwel's Second Corps division. Seven essays cover Confederate subjects, and six examine Union subjects. Although Three Days at Gettysburg offers only four new essays, the book is a fine contribution to Gettysburg historiography. The book is recommended, particularly for those who have not read the previous two volumes. Jeffry D. Wert Centre Hall, Pennsylvania A Light and Uncertain Hold: A History ofthe Sixty-sixth Ohio Volunteer Infantry . By David T. Thackery. (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1999. Pp. xvi, 32 1. $35.00.) The late David T. Thackery, a native of Urbana, Ohio, who served as curator of local and family history at Chicago's Newberry Library, has created an accurate , detailed account of the previously unchronicled 66th Ohio Volunteer Infantry's participation in the Civil War. This scholarly work is more than a military history of the regiment recruited primarily in the west-central Ohio county ofChampaign. It is also a community history, offering glimpses into the family origins of county residents, antebellum political divisions and Underground Railroad activities as well as the postwar treatment and commemoration of its veterans. As the author rightly contends, "These men were also extensions of their communities" (xiii). In this regard, Thackery's work is similar in purpose to Kerry A. Trask's Fire Within: A Civil War narrativefrom Wisconsin. The 66th left Urbana, Ohio, in January 1862 under the command of Col. Charles Candy, who had previously served in the ist U.S. Infantry. The regiment initially formed a part of Lander's division of the Army of the Potomac. BOOK REVIEWS365 The 66th saw its first and costliest action at Port Republic, where Stonewall Jackson's forces inflicted a 50 percent casualty rate. A month later, its ranks were further depleted at Cedar Mountain. The 66th went on to fight at Antietam, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg before its transfer to the western theater, where itjoined the Army of the Cumberland . Shortly after the Chattanooga campaign, the regiment faced reenlistment. Agonizing over his decision, Pvt. Joseph Diltz wrote, "Dam the enlisting again I am not so full ofWar as that" ( 1 80). "Veteranizing" won out with Diltz and the 66th. It became Ohio's first regiment to secure the necessary numbers to qualify as a veteran regiment. The 66th took part in Sherman's Atlanta campaign, the March to the Sea and through the Carolinas. At war's end, only two hundred of its original recruits remained with the regiment. In the final chapter, Thackery examines the postwar lives of some of the veterans and the ways in which they influenced their communities. Although many suffered lifelong disabilities, those soldiers who returned to Champaign County benefited from their veteran status. Not surprisingly, residents repaid their public debt by electing and appointing many of the regiment's veterans to public office. Utilizing newspaper accounts pension records, unpublished diaries and letters , county histories, and records of veterans' organizations, the author skillfully...