Charlotte's Boys: Civil War Correspondence of the Branch Family of Savannah (review)

352CIVIL WAR HISTORY Charlotte 's Boys: Civil War Correspondence of the Branch Family of Savannah . By Mauriel Phillips Joslyn. (Berryville, Va.: Rockbridge Publishing Company , 1966. Pp. xix, 374. $32.00.) The editor, a teacher and Civil War reenactor who resides in Sparta, Georgia, has published primarily the letters that were exchanged between a devoted mother, Charlotte Branch, widow and milliner of Savannah, and her three sons who were equally devoted to her. All three, John, Sanford, and Hamilton, enthusiastically joined the local Oglethorpe Light Infantry as a lieutenant, corporal , and private, respectively, and marched off to war inVirginia under Savannah fire-eater Col. Francis S. Bartow. At First Manassas John was killed, Sanford captured, and Hamilton wounded. Heartsick, Charlotte traveled to Virginia. Unsuccessful in retrieving John's body, she nursed Hamilton and his comrades and unsuccessfully attempted to visit Sanford. He was paroled in December and returned to Savannah with his mother. Meanwhile, Hamilton and his unit were sent to the Virginia Peninsula to stop the Union advance on Richmond; there he was wounded and furloughed. After being officially paroled, Sanford returned to his regiment, was elected a first lieutenant, and on July 4, 1863, was severely wounded and captured near Gettysburg. He spent most of the remainder of the war in Union hospitals and prisons. After his recovery, Hamilton was elected a lieutenant in the Savannah Cadets guarding coastal Georgia, but in 1863 hejoined Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's army in north Georgia. In the thick of the fighting to stop Sherman from taking Atlanta, Hamilton was wounded a third and fourth time. He recovered and after the fall of Atlanta returned to his unit, which moved into Tennessee, where Hamilton experienced hard marching and ferocious fighting during 1864-65. After Appomattox, Hamilton unsuccessfully attempted to join up with Gen. Kirby Smith. Several dozen rather uninformative letters from friends of the family could have been omitted by the editor; also, it would have been helpful to the reader if the many soldiers and battle sites appearing in the letters had been identified at the bottom of each page and if maps had been included; and the failure of the author to consult numerous, recently published and revisionist books on the era may have led her in brief transition essays to adopt a 1940s view of the South in the war. These caveats aside, Ms. Joslyn has made available to historians letters that heretofore were not readily accessible. The firsthand accounts by Sanford of conditions in Union prisons and hospitals and descriptions by Hamilton ofarmy life, the officers and men, and the fierce battles and skirmishes in northern and eastern Virginia, northern Georgia, and middle Tennessee are essential to students of the American Civil War. Walter J. Fraser, Jr. Georgia Southern University ...