Leaving Home in Dark Blue: Chronicling Ohio's Civil War Experience through Primary Sources and Literature ed. by Curt Brown (review)

Although there were no significant Civil War battles within Ohio's borders, Leaving Home in Dark Blue successfully cements its legacy in the pantheon of Civil War scholarship. Editor Curt Brown assembles a collection of primary sources that are chronologically organized to provide the reader a firsthand account of Ohioans' thoughts and feelings during one of our nation's most trying times.

One of this book's many strengths lies in the diverse historiographical content reflected in Brown's editorial choices. Gender historians will find "Ellen," an excerpt from Rebecca Harding Davis's writings, very useful. It chronicles the lonely journey of this determined, independent woman searching for her brother, a Union soldier, who was encamped somewhere in northern Virginia. In another piece, an Oberlin College student, Sarah Merion, writes to her sister about the panic-stricken city of Cincinnati, which was left open to a possible southern invasion.

Civil War prison scholars will find valuable several sources collected in this volume. Giles W. Shurtleff's account, "A Degree in Prison Life," details his capture and imprisonment during the early part of the war. In "Scenes from Libby Prison," J. W. Chamberlain writes a descriptive letter entailing how southerners treated Union prisoners in Richmond, Virginia. Leroy Warren's New Orleans's parish prison account describes the bone-dust trade, a system that involved the production and selling of trinkets and ornaments made of bone.

Social historians will also find value in examining sources such as the poem "The Colored Soldiers," in which famed African American author Paul Laurence Dunbar depicts black soldiers' difficult experiences during the conflict. Moreover, a letter reprinted in the Daily Cleveland Herald highlights the somewhat contradictory nature of praise for Ohio's 5th Regiment U.S. Colored Troops (147). Finally, in "Freed to Fight," manumitted African American, Milton Holland, recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions at the Battle of Chaffin's Farm, eloquently demonstrates his pride in being given the opportunity to defend the Union.

These are but a few of the examples Brown selected to illustrate how the people of Ohio reacted to and participated in the Civil War. Poems, soldiers' diaries, newspaper articles, and songs are provided in this single volume, a valuable compilation of nineteenth-century original documents and creative works. Consequently, Leaving Home in Dark Blue successfully etches Ohio's place in Civil War literature that will be enjoyed by both academic and popular audiences.