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The 26th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry was quietly mustered into service in Milwaukee on September 17, 1862-the bloodiest day in American history. Composed primarily of German immigrants and Americans of German descent, the 26th fought and bled its way into the record books as one of FoxÕs ÒFighting 300Ó regiments. James S. PulaÕs The Sigel Regiment: A History of the 26th Wisconsin Volunteers, 1862-1865, is the first book to examine this regimentÕs storied yet overlooked history. The 26thÕs service spanned three years and three theaters of war. The ÒSigel Regiment,Ó named after German General Franz Sigel, was initially absorbed into the Army of the Potomac, and attached to the 2nd Brigade, 3rd Division, HowardÕs 11th Army Corps. Its bloody battlefield debut took place at Chancellorsville on May 2, 1863, where the Wisconsin soldiers found themselves on the receiving end of one of the most successful surprise attacks in military history. Outnumbered, outflanked, and caught in a crossfire, the battling regiment and its Colonel William Jacobs refused to fall back before the onslaught until twice ordered to do so. Similar ill-luck two months later ensconced the regiment north of Gettysburg, where the Badger State troops, this time under Lt. Col. Hans Boebel, left another 250 men on the field. By the time the 26th Wisconsin shipped out that fall for service in the Western Theater, hardened combat veterans who had seen the worst war has to offer populated its ranks. Service in Tennessee with the Army of the Cumberland lessened the regimentÕs exposure to hard combat only temporarily. Burdened with political strife and facing a cold winter, the Wisconsin men marched and skirmished their way through the fall and early winter campaigns of Chattanooga and Knoxville. The spring of 1864 brought with it another season of bloodshed when General William T. Sherman determined to drive deep into Georgia and capture Atlanta. Fighting now as part of the 20th Corps, the 26th Wisconsin distinguished itself on a number of fields, including Resaca, New Hope Church, Kennesaw Mountain, and Peach Tree Creek. The thinning German regiment achieved a special distinction at Peach Tree Creek by capturing the flag of the 33rd Mississippi Infantry. After the fall of Atlanta, the men of the 26th tramped to Savannah on the March to the Sea, and north into the Carolinas, where more hard fighting at Averasboro and Bentonville awaited them. By the end of the war, 1,089 men had served in the 26thÕs ranks; more than 17% were killed or mortally wounded. PulaÕs gracefully written and superbly researched The Sigel Regiment: A History of the 26th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry, 1862-1865, is a distinguished study of a fighting ethnic regiment.
The fighting on the first day at Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, was unexpected, heavy, confusing, and in many ways, decisive. Much of it consisted of short and often separate simultaneous engagements or “firefights,” a term soldiers often use to describe close, vicious, and bloody combat. Several books have studied this important inaugural day of Gettysburg, but none have done so from the perspective of the rank and file of both armies. John Michael Priest’s “Strong Men of the Regiment Sobbed Like Children”: John Reynolds’ I Corps at Gettysburg on July 1, 1863 rectifies this oversight in splendid style. When dawn broke on July 1, no one on either side could have conceived what was about to take place. Anticipating a fight and with a keen appreciation for terrain, Brig. Gen. John Buford deployed his Union cavalry in a giant arc north and west of Gettysburg to slow down any Confederate advance until Maj. Gen. John Reynolds could bring up his infantry. By the time the foot soldiers of the I Corps arrived, A. P. Hill’s heavy Confederate formations had pushed back the troopers from the west. Richard Ewell’s troops would soon arrive from the north, threatening the town and its key road network. Reynolds, who would die early in the fighting, poured his troops in as they arrived. The road system and undulating ground broke up command control, and the various ridges, tall ground cover, and powder smoke made target recognition difficult. Brigades and regiments often engaged on their own initiatives without the direction of a division or corps commander. The men of both armies fought with determination born of desperation, valor, and fear. By the time the fighting ended, the I Corps was in shambles and in pell-mell retreat for Cemetery Hill. Its bold stand, together with the XI Corps north of town, bought precious hours for the rest of the Army of the Potomac to arrive and occupy good defensive ground. Priest, who Edwin Bearss hailed as “the Ernie Pyle of the Civil War,” spent a decade researching this study and walking the ground to immerse readers into the uncertain world of the rank-and-file experience. He consulted more than 300 primary sources, including letters, diaries, memoirs, newspaper accounts, recollections, casualty lists, and drill manuals to present the battle from the ground up. Nineteen detailed regimental-level maps illustrate the ebb and flow of the battle. The result is a fast-paced narrative sure to please the most demanding students of the Civil War. The footnotes alone are worth the price of admission. Readers will close the book with a full understanding of why a veteran New Yorker spoke for the survivors of both armies when he wrote, “Strong men of the regiment sobbed like children.”
On a cold day in early January 1864, Robert E. Lee wrote to Confederate president Jefferson Davis "The time is at hand when, if an attempt can be made to capture the enemy's forces at New Berne, it should be done." Over the next few months, Lee's dispatch would precipitate a momentous series of events as the Confederates, threatened by a supply crisis and an emerging peace movement, sought to seize Federal bases in eastern North Carolina. This book tells the story of these operations—the late war Confederate resurgence in the Old North State. Using rail lines to rapidly consolidate their forces, the Confederates would attack the main Federal position at New Bern in February, raid the northeastern counties in March, hit the Union garrisons at Plymouth and Washington in late April, and conclude with another attempt at New Bern in early May. The expeditions would involve joint-service operations, as the Confederates looked to support their attacks with powerful, homegrown ironclad gunboats. These offensives in early 1864 would witness the failures and successes of southern commanders including George Pickett, James Cooke, and a young, aggressive North Carolinian named Robert Hoke. Likewise they would challenge the leadership of Union army and naval officers such as Benjamin Butler, John Peck, and Charles Flusser. Newsome does not neglect the broader context, revealing how these military events related to a contested gubernatorial election; the social transformations in the state brought on by the war; the execution of Union prisoners at Kinston; and the activities of North Carolina Unionists. Lee's January proposal triggered one of the last successful Confederate offensives. The Fight for the Old North State captures the full scope, as well as the dramatic details of this struggle for North Carolina.
"This book is a companion volume to Biographical books, 1950-1980, completing a comprehensive one hundred and five year bibliography of biographical and autobiographical works published or distributed in the United States"--Preface.
Alan T. Nolan is one of our most esteemed historians of the Civil War. His classic history The Iron Brigade was chosen as one of the "100 best books ever written on the Civil War" by Civil War Times Illustrated. His articles have appeared in such publications as The American Historical Review, Gettysburg Magazine, Civil War, Civil War Times Illustrated, Indiana Magazine of History, and Virginia Magazine of History and Biography and he has been awarded the Nevins-Freeman award by the Chicago Civil War Round Table. Nolan is not the typical Civil-War historian. That he is a top-notch historian, no one can deny. But his legal training at Harvard, his career in the law, and his many years as an officer of the Indiana Historical Society have given him remarkable insights not imaginable by other historians. This new collection of previously published material celebrates Nolan's life-long research and study of the Civil War. Included are essays on the Iron Brigade, Gettysburg, and leaders such as Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, John Gibbon, and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. Central to all of the essays is Nolan's admiration for the valor of the common soldier and his conviction that the War was neither romantic nor glorious, though its results--emancipation and the maintenance of the Union--were surely monumental.