Thanks to Jim Schmidt for bringing this link to Andy Hall's fine blog to my attention on facebook.
Andy shared this link to a story about some new pension records available online, this time for Kentucky Confederates. See this further link to the Department of Confederate Pensions.
This could be a very nice tool and resource for researchers and I am glad to see Kentucky provide such a tool. Hopefully more Civil War era information will become available during the sesquicentennial and years beyond
Showing posts with label confederates. Show all posts
Showing posts with label confederates. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Book Review: Faces of the Confederacy
by Ronald S. Coddington, forward by Michael Fellman
copyright 2008, The Johns Hopkins University Press
The carte-de-visite was a popular form of photography during the Civil War era and Ronald Coddington takes advantage of it in this volume, the follow up to his Faces of the Civil War: An Album of Union Soldiers and Their Stories (which I have not yet read.)
He searched various collections, of private individuals and public institutions to find these CDVs. His criteria included the condition of the card as well as it having the identification of the soldier pictured on it. He then researched the lives of these dozens of men and put together brief biographies of their lives, in and out of the war.
This is a very fine and enjoyable compilation. Putting names to these old pictures gives them extra meaning and the information he uncovered about each was a great addition, almost bringing these men back to life again.
Mr. Coddington, who also publishes the blog Faces of War, did not simply find pictures of the most famous Confederate soldiers he could find and repeat information familiar to many Civil War enthusiasts; he specifically chose to focus on soldiers below the rank of colonel, i.e. the rank and file of the army, most of whose names are unknown to all but a select few. This makes the book even more valuable, providing insights into the typical soldiers who did not benefit from the privileges of holding a high rank - these were the men who carried out orders, who marched from battlefield to battlefield and who slept in tents and on the ground, whether wet or dry, hot or cold.
I really enjoyed this book. It is well-written and moves quickly from one portrait to the next. It is a very fine volume and I do now want to get its precursor and read about the "common" Union soldiers Mr. Coddington profiled.
It is organized chronologically, based on the event that he describes for each soldier, from the start of the war to the end, and the preface, endnotes and references all are beneficial to this book, especially the endnotes, many of which include interesting further tidbits about these men.
Faces of the Confederacy is an informative, enjoyable look at some of the "common soldiers" of the Confederacy, putting names with faces, and faces with their lives. It not only preserves the memory of these specific individuals, but also shows the human side of the war and the impact it had on these men and their families. It is a fine book and I do recommend it to anyone interested in the Civil War.
Faces of the Confederacy is an informative, enjoyable look at some of the "common soldiers" of the Confederacy, putting names with faces, and faces with their lives. It not only preserves the memory of these specific individuals, but also shows the human side of the war and the impact it had on these men and their families. It is a fine book and I do recommend it to anyone interested in the Civil War.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Book Review: Reluctant Rebels
Kenneth W. Noe
copyright 2010
University of North Carolina Press
Book Club edition
Civil War America, Gary Gallagher, editor
Studying motivation of why soldiers fought in the Civil War has become a more popular topic as time has passed, with several prominent scholars offering different thoughts, opinions and perspectives on the reasons men risked their health, lives and futures in the 1861-1865 conflict.
Among the most recent historians to discuss this area of study is Kenneth W. Noe, Draughton Professor of Southern History at Auburn University. In Reluctant Rebels, he chooses to focus on men who joined the Confederate army in 1862 or later, after missing out, skipping out, ignoring or otherwise not giving in to the rush of volunteers who signed up soon after the firing of Fort Sumter and Lincoln's call for troops.
Noe uses sources from and about 320 soldiers he identified as late enlistees and digs through their war-time correspondence as well as census and tax record information to compare them to the men who had enrolled earlier, in demographic information and,their motivation for joining the army.
Throughout the book, he compares the demographics of the later enlistees to the "first responders" as we might call them today, and also looks at their level of motivation due to subjects like patriotism, Confederate nationalism, defense of slavery, political ideology, peer pressure (or sexual intimidation) from others, especially women at home, bounties and conscription. He also nicely describes the ties that these later fighters kept to their homes and the importance of their messes, relatives and other small groups of comrades that they formed once in the army.
I enjoyed the way he did this and found it to be very informative. It is not always the smoothest narrative, but expresses Noe's findings very well and in a manner that makes sense. It can be difficult to write a readable analysis of that style, frequently relying on statistics and numbers, but Noe accomplished this and produced a book that is very readable and enjoyable, as well as informative. (By the end of the book, several of the soldiers whose writings he used become very familiar and the reader - or at least this one - starts to know what type of feeling to expect when their names show up in the text.)
Dr. Noe also consistently compares his findings to what many of the authors who tackled this are before him claimed, and showed how they compared and contrasted, both in the differences between the soldiers and the emphasis on various aspects that each author used. In this sense, it is a bit of historiography on soldier motivation (including a good discussion and many examples of the three main types of motivation that historian John Lynn had helped describe - initial motivation, sustaining motivation and combat motivation. This was a new topic to me and one that I find fascinating and will try to consider when doing future reading about the war.)
At the end of the book, he includes four tables from his database of information, showing more detailed numbers of the issues discussed throughout the book. This work also includes end notes and a long list of works cited.
Reluctant Rebels is a fine book that Civil War students or enthusiasts interested in why the soldiers fought and kept fighting should read. It describes many of the possible motivations these men had, first not to enlist, then to (finally) join the thousands of others who had gone before them and, finally, why they continued to fight. It is very informative and enjoyable and a book I am happy to recommend.
Noe uses sources from and about 320 soldiers he identified as late enlistees and digs through their war-time correspondence as well as census and tax record information to compare them to the men who had enrolled earlier, in demographic information and,their motivation for joining the army.
Throughout the book, he compares the demographics of the later enlistees to the "first responders" as we might call them today, and also looks at their level of motivation due to subjects like patriotism, Confederate nationalism, defense of slavery, political ideology, peer pressure (or sexual intimidation) from others, especially women at home, bounties and conscription. He also nicely describes the ties that these later fighters kept to their homes and the importance of their messes, relatives and other small groups of comrades that they formed once in the army.
I enjoyed the way he did this and found it to be very informative. It is not always the smoothest narrative, but expresses Noe's findings very well and in a manner that makes sense. It can be difficult to write a readable analysis of that style, frequently relying on statistics and numbers, but Noe accomplished this and produced a book that is very readable and enjoyable, as well as informative. (By the end of the book, several of the soldiers whose writings he used become very familiar and the reader - or at least this one - starts to know what type of feeling to expect when their names show up in the text.)
Dr. Noe also consistently compares his findings to what many of the authors who tackled this are before him claimed, and showed how they compared and contrasted, both in the differences between the soldiers and the emphasis on various aspects that each author used. In this sense, it is a bit of historiography on soldier motivation (including a good discussion and many examples of the three main types of motivation that historian John Lynn had helped describe - initial motivation, sustaining motivation and combat motivation. This was a new topic to me and one that I find fascinating and will try to consider when doing future reading about the war.)
At the end of the book, he includes four tables from his database of information, showing more detailed numbers of the issues discussed throughout the book. This work also includes end notes and a long list of works cited.
Reluctant Rebels is a fine book that Civil War students or enthusiasts interested in why the soldiers fought and kept fighting should read. It describes many of the possible motivations these men had, first not to enlist, then to (finally) join the thousands of others who had gone before them and, finally, why they continued to fight. It is very informative and enjoyable and a book I am happy to recommend.
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