Book Notes

BOOK NOTSS As They Remembered. By Agatha Louise Roberts. (New York: The William Frederick Press, 1964. Pp. 181. Paperback. $3.00.) The crowded Civil War field can nevertheless always use good regimental studies; but this account of the 45th Pennsylvania is more a tribute than a history. The fact that the book is dedicated to Ambrose E. Bumside of 'The Bloody Ninth" Corps sets the stage for a presentation that lacks table of contents, maps, illustrations, bibliography, and index. The 45th Pennsylvania incurred the highest casualties of any regiment in the Ninth Corps. Its war record began in earnest at South Mountain, included the siege of Knoxville, and culminated in the battles of the Wilderness , Spotsylvania (misspelled throughout the book), and the Crater. Miss Roberts is descended from three members of this Keystone unit. In the production of her story she borrowed extensively from a handful of soldiers' memoirs and consulted the well-known printed sources. The writing style is a bit stilted on occasion; yet this account will have to suffice until someone produces the full and comprehensive history that this Pennsylvania regiment more than deserves. In Pursuit of the General: A History of the Civil War Railroad Raid. By William Pittenger. (San Marino, Calif.: Golden West Books, 1965. Pp.416. $6.95.) Of all the thousands of accounts written of and about the Civil War, that which is undoubtedly the most easily attainable in secondhand book shops is William Pittenger's narrative of "The Great Locomotive Chase." Corporal Pittenger was one of the Federal survivors of this 1862 foray deep into Georgia. His first narrative of the raid appeared in 1863 under the tide Daring and Suffering. No less than eleven subsequent editions of the same memoir appeared in print. Some were published in paperback; some were entided Capturing a Locomotive, while others bore the tide The Great Locomotive Chase. The highly imaginative author progressively enlarged and embellished each new edition. The basic facts as presented by Pittenger are authentic, but one is never quite sure where facts ended and fiction began. This reissue (by weak offset printing) of a post-1881 edition contains a brief foreword, no annotation, and no index. Civil War students now have their pick of thirteen different printings of the same unbalanced story. 385 An Epitome of My Life: Civil War Reminiscences. By William M. Walton. (Austin, Tex.: The Waterloo Press, 1965. Pp. 99. $5.00.) Major "Buck" Walton was one of the leading post-Civil War attorneys in Texas. In 1914, a year before his death, he bowed to the pleas of his family and penned his reminiscences of service in the 21st Texas Cavalry a half-century earlier. If this veteran relied on anything more than an extraordinary memory, he made no mention of it in his memoirs. Yet, the narrative is too detailed and vivid to be the product of recollection alone. Walton's style is lively, at times exciting, and always interesting. His cavalry unit served in the Trans-Mississippi theater and took part in the Little Rock, Helena, and Red River campaigns. The "epitome" contains commentaries on camp life, a lice fight, women spies, scouting, and such officers as John Marmaduke and "Granny" Holmes. Some documentation and an index further enrich the narrative. This work was published in a limited edition of one thousand copies by the Friends of the Austin Public Library. Narrative of Riots at Alton. By Edward Beecher. (New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1965. Pp. xxx, 98. Paperback, $1.25.) The first martyr to the abolitionist cause was the Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy , who, on the evening of November 7, 1837, was sf^ to death by a mob inside his Alton, Illinois, newspaper office. Had not John Brown been hanged twenty years later, the murder of Lovejoy would have been the most momentous event of the anti-slavery movement. As it is, relatively little is known today about the Lovejoy killing. Here, reprinted in paperback , is an exciting and moving account of the entire incident. Edward Beecher (son of Lyman and nephew of Henry Ward Beecher) was an eyewitness to the Alton episode. His narrative on the causes and results of Lovejoy's death...