The Union, The Civil War and John W. Tuttle: A Kentucky Captain's Account (review)

80CIVIL WAR HISTORY edited and only a brief biographical sketch and epilogue provided. On the other hand, the diary of Joel Chambers, edited by students at Memphis State University, includes a biographical sketch, a glossary of names, terms, and events, as well as a chronology of the activities of Chambers and his unit (he saw service during the Atlanta campaign). Historians and general readers, however, will find the reminiscenses and diary of Samuel Foster professionally edited. Norman Brown adds a useful index and an informative introduction and detailed biographical profile. Careful annotations and notes are provided throughout the volume . As a result, the reader is given a history in microcosm of the Army of the Tennessee from Chickamauga to the Battle of Franklin, including the siege of Atlanta. This diary, then, is a valuable supplement to the annals of the war in the Western Theater. Equally well edited and valuable are the letters of James M. Williams. John Kent Folmer provides extensive annotations and a detailed index. There is much interesting information here drawn from Williams's service at Hall's Mill, Fort Grimes, Camp Memminger, Fort Pillow, Shiloh, and Corinth. In addition , readers will find the Williams diary especially informative in regard to the defenses of Mobile and life in the rebel garrisons. Whatever these accounts tell us in miniature about the campaigns of the Civil War, all four reveal devotion to a cause, pride in "being there," as well as the boredom, the fear, the exhaustion—all those elements that make war the great experience of the common man. Frank J. Wetta Galveston College The Union, The Civil War and John W. Tuttle: A Kentucky Captain's Account. Edited by Hambleton Tapp and James C. Klotter. (The Kentucky Historical Society, 1980. Pp. xvi, 298. $20.00.) Marvin R. Cain in a recent article in this journal argued persuasively that accounts of Union officers and men remain the most promising source for understanding the motives and purposes of Civil War soldiers. In such a propitious historiographical context, it would appear that the wartime diary of Captain John W. Tuttle should offer welcome insights into how and why American civilians volunteered and fought in a bloody and protracted civil war. Tuttle's account should also throw light on why Kentucky soldiers, caught in the social and cultural ambivalence of a border state so divided in its loyalties, should fight well for the Union. Sadly, Tuttle's diary fulfills none of these expectations. Although his Third Kentucky Infantry Regiment participated in important battles— Shiloh, Stone's River, Chickamauga, and Atlanta—Tuttle seemed curiously incapable of revealing either his inner thoughts or reactions to his comrades fighting around him. He scrupulously lists places, means of transportation—in short, all the trivial details of his daily existence— BOOK REVIEWS81 without giving any clear picture or grasp of the "face of battle." Did he consider the horrors of war which he almost daily faced so commonplace as not to merit observation? The reader is given no clue. When Tuttle does rarely attempt analysis of the larger conflagration, his conclusions are so commonplace as to appear almost trite. Heargues, for instance, that Kentucky Unionists fought only for the preservation of the Union, not for the abolition of slavery. On another occasion he concludes that schoolteachers "on account of this close attention to details, their patient and methodical performance of routine, and their experience in the enforcement of discipline" make the best officers in both armies. Preachers "showed up well," but were "perhaps just a little too severe and tyrannical." Lawyers were too easy-going, and politicians were "the very poorest sticks in the service" (p. 45) . Even such questionable gems as these, however, are rare in the total text of the diary. One is forcibly struck by the loss to historians occasioned by Tuttle's continuing and peculiar reticence. Trained as a lawyer at the University of Louisville just before the war, he obviously had both the insight and capacity to make shrewd observations about the holocaust which surrounded him. Nor is Tuttle overly concerned with his own selfimportance ; he ridicules his own frailties, getting drunk and acting "the fool very completely," with disarming frankness...