The Seventh West Virginia Infantry: An Embattled Union Regiment from the Civil War's Most Divided State by David W. Mellott and Mark A. Snell (review)

It is not an understatement to say that David W. Mellott's and Mark A. Snell's regimental history marks a seminal turning point in West Virginia's Civil War historiography. A century-long drought existed between when the few regimental histories produced by the veterans themselves, along with Theodore Lang's admirable but imperfect Loyal West Virginia (1895), were published and the appearance of Mellott's and Snell's history. It can be argued that The Seventh West Virginia Infantry represents the first scholarly, book-length account of a West Virginia regiment ever written.

The authors tap a number of primary sources compiled from military service and pension records at the National Archives, research Mellott conducted on his own family connections to the Seventh West Virginia, statistical data compiled under Snell's directorship at the George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War at Shepherd University, manuscript collections, the Official Records, and contemporary newspapers such as the venerable Wheeling Intelligencer.

The first two chapters, presented against the backdrop of western Virginia's separation from Virginia, largely concentrate on the regiment's recruitment, organization, and early skirmishes from 1861 until mid-1862. One of the characteristics unique to many Loyal Virginia (later West Virginia) regiments was that not only did Virginians enlist, but Ohioans from Monroe County largely made up Companies D and G, while Pennsylvanians from Greene County, filled the ranks of Companies E and F. These men, along with a fair number of immigrants, rounded out the regiment's complement.

Through Mellott's and Snell's documentation of the Seventh's recruitment, they offer a tantalizing glimpse into a question that Civil War historians, to a large degree, have ignored: why did hundreds of men from Ohio and Pennsylvania willingly serve in Loyal Virginia regiments? Generally, the simple answer given is that Ohio and Pennsylvania had filled their quotas and turned these men away, but did regional identity and socioeconomic relationships play a larger role than historians have ventured to say? Mellott's and Snell's research doesn't come to any conclusions on this point, but their work does provide the foundations for further inquiry.

The bulk of Mellott's and Snell's book, however, is rightfully devoted to the Seventh's esteemed combat record. Assigned early in 1862 to guard the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in western Virginia, the Seventh engaged in skirmishes with regular Confederate forces and guerillas. Subsequently, as part of General James Shields's division, the regiment fought against Stonewall Jackson's forces in the Shenandoah Valley.

In July 1862, the Seventh West Virginia Infantry was permanently transferred to the Army of the Potomac. It participated in the waning stages of McClellan's failed Peninsula Campaign and the Seven Day's Battles. At the Sunken Road at Antietam, on September 17, 1862, it suffered its largest number of casualties: thirty killed in action, seven mortally wounded, and seventy-seven wounded. After Antietam, the Seventh fought in the battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and perhaps, its finest hour, at Cemetery Ridge on July 2, 1863, at Gettysburg. The following year the Seventh fought in the battles of the Wilderness, Cold Harbor, and at Petersburg. Along with the rest of the Army of the Potomac, the regiment found itself at Appomattox Court House in April 1865, when General Lee's forces surrendered. By the war's end, the regiment had become the fledgling state's most storied regiment. Its participation in some of the most hard-fought battles of the war ensured that it lived up to its self-proclaimed sobriquet, The Bloody Seventh.

The book's epilogue discusses the Seventh West Virginia Infantry in history and memory. It focuses on the regiment's veterans and their attempt to assimilate into civilian life after...