Editor’s Note: This review originally appeared at The Siege of Petersburg Online: Beyond the Crater earlier today.

Jordan, Mary & Hatch, Joyce. Dear Friend Amelia: The Civil War Letters of Private John Tidd. Six Mile Creek Press (January 2011). 176 pp., 100+ illustrations, notes. ISBN: 978-1-57003-922-5 $34.95 (Cloth).

Reading a collection of wartime soldier letters is always an interesting experience. As you read, you tend to become drawn into the soldier’s life, wondering if he’ll ever make it back home. Such is the case in Dear Friend Amelia: The Civil War Letters of Private John Tidd, a book of letters and diary entries from Union 9th Corps soldier John Tidd. Tidd, who hailed from Speedsville, NY, spent his entire war eagerly writing his “dear friend Amelia” and waiting for her letters in return. Tidd went from relatively safe duty guarding the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad to the killing fields of 1864 Virginia. As Tidd is placed in more danger the concern for his well-being mounts. Dear Friend Amelia is an excellent pairing of Tidd’s correspondence with Amelia and the authors’ context-setting introductions to each chapter. This mixture results in a book for almost anyone interested in a good story, with history and genealogy lovers being perfect fits. With this one, no prior knowledge of the Civil War is necessary.

Authors Mary Jordan and Joyce Hatch are sisters from a large family who are imbued with a love of history. A descendant of a member of the 137th NY, author Mary Jordan has lived in Speedsville for the past 47 years. The genesis for Dear Friend Amelia occurred in the 1970s when Mary came into possession of many of John Tidd’s letters. In the nearly 40 years since the sisters have uncovered many other letters to Amelia as well as Tidd’s war diary from 1864. These materials form the basis of the book.

John Tidd was born in Ohio in 1839 but moved to Rawson Hollow, NY as a young man.  The small town was located  just outside of Speedsville. There he met Amelia Haskell, a young woman three years his junior, and they became good friends. Of all the people Tidd wrote to in the Civil War he treasured Amelia’s letters the most. It is clear in his letters how much he cares for her. Tidd was one of the first to enter Company B, 109th New York in 1862, and his regiment spent the remainder of 1862/3 guarding the B&O railroad, where they saw no action. Tidd’s regiment was moved into the 1st Brigade, 3rd Division, 9th Corps in time for Grant’s 1864 Overland Campaign in Virginia. Tidd fought in many of the fiercest battles that spring and summer, including the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, The Second Battle of Petersburg, and the Battle of the Crater, among others. His letters grow increasingly despondent as he wishes for home and an end to the war. Through it all he faithfully writes to “dear friend Amelia”.

Does Tidd survive an increasingly hostile war? Do John and Amelia love happily ever after, or does a different fate await? The difficulty of reviewing a book of letters lies in the ability to give away just enough of the story to entice readers, while at the same time keeping the protagonists’ fates secret. This review will not deviate from that approach. The authors do not give the ending away either, as fates of key participants hang in the balance until the end. A concluding chapter covers the years after the Civil War and what became of those mentioned in John’s letters.

The book follows a nice format consisting of the authors setting the stage early in each chapter, giving an overview of the war during the time the letters for that chapter were written and also going into some detail about where Tidd was and what he was up to. The authors’ introductions are clearly aimed at those less well versed in Civil War history but serious students of the Civil War will not be hampered by them either. Over a hundred beautiful illustrations are laced throughout the book, many of which address nicely some comment made in one of the soldier’s letters. Some of the illustrations are images of Tidd’s actual written pages, a nice touch which adds to the readers’ interest. Entries from Tidd’s and others’ diaries fill in some of the blanks when significant space exists between letters. Taken together, they form a coherent, interesting, and visually pleasing whole.

Dear Friend Amelia is an excellent addition to the published letters and diaries of Civil War soldiers, and beautifully done. This hardback book has an original press run of 500 copies, so be sure to get yours before it is gone forever. Readers will be transfixed by Tidd’s long, hard Civil War road, especially as the fighting intensifies in 1864. This book will appeal to those interested in historical documents from common people, those interested in the history of the Speedsville and Binghamton areas of New York, and students of the Civil War interested in the Eastern Campaigns of 1864. It is definitely recommended to students of the Petersburg Campaign and the Civil War.

I would like to thank Mary Jordan, one of the authors of Dear Friend Amelia: The Civil War Letters of Private John Tidd.

Be sure to check out the Dear Friend Amelia web site.  The authors have additional information located there.

Editor’s Note: A copy of this book was provided gratis for the above review.

For detailed information and notes on this book, see BTC Notes: Dear Friend Amelia: The Civil War Letters of Private John Tidd.

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Civil War Book Review: Dear Friend Amelia: The Civil War Letters of Private John Tidd

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J. D. Petruzzi has a thoughtful and perceptive post about how historical events are perceived by authors and readers. I would add that it’s all to easy to substitute opinion for fact, and deplore that many modern authors feel the need to put themselves on a higher moral plane so as to pass judgment on their subjects and at times even their readers.

War, more than perhaps any other type of human event, is a complex, chaotic process that often defies any sort of neat understanding or retelling. Reading after action reports you really do sometimes wonder if the authors were on the same battlefield.

That bring us to the latest rage in historical studies, war as a social event. While social profiling has been popular in regimental histories for some time, the latest trend is to use huge data sets and apply the tools of social science to reach some sort of conclusion. I, frankly, have some doubts about this approach, not because it’s necessarily invalid but because authors invariably promise far more than they can deliver and frequently stray off into social determinism. This is particularly true when the authors are not that entirely familiar with the subject matter.

I say all this to preface a massive project by two UCLA academics, Dora L.  Costa and Matthew E. Kahn: Heroes and Cowards: the Social Face of War.

Our book would not have been possible without a monumental data collection effort that first began in 1981, led by Robert Fogel, the 1993 Nobel Laureate in Economics. How do you construct a longitudinal dataset from disparate sources and from the free-form letters, affidavits, and other documents that constitute a soldier’s record in the National Archives? The data are publicly available here.

Beginning with one list of white volunteer units and one list of U.S. Colored Infantry Units, both sorted in random order, inputters collected basic descriptive information from the “Regimental Books” in the National Archives on all of the enlisted men in a company until the two samples consisted of roughly 1.6 percent of all whites (almost 6,000 men) and 1.6 percent of all blacks (almost 6,000 men) mustered into the Union Army. The men were then linked to their army records, stored in the National Archives. These records consist of compiled military service records and of cards containing medical records and vital statistics.

….

From today’s vantage point, the Fogel data set is extraordinary. Concern about identity theft and insurance companies using confidential information to cherry-pick healthy and low-risk patients would make it extremely difficult to build a similar dataset today. A researcher attempting to build an analogous data set for Vietnam veterans would need to obtain the consent of each man. But the types of individuals willing to grant permission would probably not be a random sample of the population. And, despite the well-publicized stories of men buying their way out of the draft, the white sample is representative of the Northern population of military age in terms of wealth and literacy rates. Only in World War II were service rates higher.

The data set is available for examination or download at the Center for Population Economics at the University of Chicago, and Costa’s work can be seen on her web page, which includes papers on topics like unit cohesion and survival in Andersonville prison.

The authors have made a series of posts about the book and their methodology on the Volokh Conspiracy blog (lawyers, but otherwise okay) here, here, and here. The latest post looks at the treatment deserters received after returning home and punishment, both formal (disenfranchisement, forfeiture of pay) and informal (social ostracism).

I am skeptical but willing to be convinced, and have ordered a copy of the book. How many horses did the authors see? How many will I see?

UPDATE: the authors have posted their last post on the subject.

UPDATE 2: For a bracing corrective about the validity of scientific studies in general, read John P. A. Ioannidis’ article on why most published studies are false, plus an interview in New Scientist.

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War, Perception, and Social History

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Some men never came home from the war, and many were simply listed as “missing.” One such unfortunate soul came to light recently at Antietam, where a hiker in the Cornfield found what he thought were human remains. Most of those who died there (and the Cornfield changed hands numerous times) were hastily buried, then re-interred later.

But some bodies were missed. And this past October, a man walking through the battlefield came upon what he thought were human remains, and he was right. Part of what he found was a human tooth. ‘Actually it was an impacted wisdom tooth was what it was,’ said John Howard, superintendent of the Antietam National Battlefield.

The National Park Service called in a team of archeologists to search the site, and they found more artifacts including the soldier’s belt buckle, and several buttons from his jacket. ‘Each one was spaced exactly the same distance apart so you know that when they laid him to rest his coat was buttoned and it laid directly down his chest,’ Howard said.

The buttons also revealed the man was a Union soldier from New York State. Scientists at the Smithsonian studied the tooth, and determined that he was between 18 and 21 years old, but it’s unlikely that they’ll ever know exactly who he was. ‘For example if there was only one New York Soldier left unknown, well then it would work but there are more than that,’ Howard said. ‘There’s probably close to 60 or 70 that we know of just from very fast research.’

Battlefields still hold their secrets. This soldier was buried near a limestone outcropping, which would explain why his remains were not turned up earlier. According to the AP account:

And he apparently was no fresh recruit. Five iron buttons found along with textile fragments included some from a coat issued in New York and others bearing the “Excelsior” slogan of federal uniforms, an indication that he had served long enough to replace the lost originals.

The soldier could have served in any of 24 New York regiments that fought in the field where fierce small-arms and artillery fire obliterated cornstalks and men alike.

Via Jules Crittenden, who has much more on the battle.

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A Soldier’s Remains

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One of the few criticisms I got on my sharpshooter book was in quoting this passage:

It became painfully apparent that, however inferior the Confederate armies were in point of education and general intelligence to the men of the Union, man for man they were the superiors of their northern antagonists in the use of arms. Their armies were composed of mainly men who had been trained to the skilful use of the rifle in that most perfect of schools, the field and forest.

This, according to present-day sensibilities, was merely a myth, although I have yet to see a serious debunking. Personally I think it would still be true that if you took a random sample of men from south of the Mason-Dixon line and compared it to the same number north of it, you’d see a significant difference in those who were familiar with handling arms, although they might not all be crack shots.
In any case the man who made the statement was Lieutenant Colonel William Ripley, the second in command of the 1st US Sharpshooters. As a veteran of the Peninsular campaign (he was wounded and Malvern Hill and subsequently invalided out of the service) he surely he would have had plenty of opportunity to confirm it.
Here’s another contemporary opinion by a former Massachusetts soldier, J. K. Hosmer, whom I have quoted before. Old Thousand Yards makes another appearance:

It is proper to inquire here as to the stuff of the troops. Which men, Confederates or Federals, made the better soldiers? In Richmond society, in February, 1862, the following estimate of the soldiers of the two sides, by General Winfield Scott, was a subject of talk: ‘Southern soldiers have elan, courage, woodcraft, consummate horsemanship, endurance of pain equal to the Indian’s, but they will not submit to discipline. They will not take care of things or husband their resources. Where they are there is waste and destruction. If it could be done by one wild desperate dash they would do it, but they cannot stand the waiting. . . . Men of the North on the other hand can wait; they can bear discipline; they can endure forever. Losses in battle are nothing to them. They will fight to the bitter end.’
Let a concrete example illustrate. One day, in 1863, before a Confederate fortress under siege, a Massachusetts corporal and an Arkansas sharp-shooter came together during a truce of a few hours. The Yankee had been won, through an eloquent outburst of Governor John A. Andrew, to enlist in the ranks, a life for which he was almost ludicrously unprepared. Untrained by out-of-door sports, he had never so much as slept in the open air; he wore spectacles. Once only, up to his mustering-in, had he fired a gun. As he stood in his mud-stained, blue attire, in one pocket lay certain crumpled and scribbled sheets, which, as a college graduate and a writer for the press, he was cherishing as material for a book. The Arkansas sharp-shooter, called by his comrades ‘Old Thousand Yards,’ stood tall, grim, and heavily bearded, with an eye like a bird of prey and a sinewy power of limb which his suit of butternut did not conceal. He had probably never seen a city; he could read and write only imperfectly. But, though untravelled and unlettered, his accomplishments were many: cradled in the forest, he was master of every backwoods art; from the ‘half-faced camp,’ perhaps the best home he had ever known, to a bed in the road or the fortress trench was no harsh transfer. His nerves had grown steady among the beasts and still wilder men of the border. ‘Old Thousand Yards’ and his friends were doughtily resisting their besiegers, and had twice beaten back energetic assaults. Yet the Union troops were equally determined, and soon after came a day when the defenders, thinned by the Federal volleys and fairly starved out, laid down their arms and gave up the fight.
The two soldiers may be taken as not unfair types of their respective sides. To be sure, Union regiments contained soldiers to whom the rifle was as another limb and the earth the familiar pillow; and throughout the army, besides the sprinkling of students, teachers, and professional men, there were many shopkeepers, mechanics, clerks, and farmers. But for the art of war they had generally everything to learn. On the other hand, in the southern levies in general could be found either absolute readiness for the field, or experience which made easy the evolution of the cool and skilful veteran.

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“The stuff of the troops”

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I’ve been meaning to offer up a review of The View from the Ground: Experiences of Civil War Soldiers for quite a long time now, but it was one of those books which has managed to stay near the top of my “to be read” list without ever actually getting read…until now.  Edited by Aaron Sheehan-Dean, the book contains nine essays all tied together by the theme of the experience of common soldiers, hence the title of the book.  Look for a multi-part series of blog entries in the coming weeks, mainly on the weekends.  I hope to do “mini-reviews” of several essays at a time, probably three to an entry if all goes well.  In all likelihood these will probably be summaries of the positions taken by each author on their chosen subjects.  Let me know if you’ve read this one, and if so, what you thought.  I’d especially like to see some feedback in the actual entries themselves.  Special thanks goes to the University Press of Kentucky.

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The Experiences of Civil War Soldiers In Several Parts

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Fellow blogger Scott Mingus has been writing a series of books on “Human Interest Stories” of various Civil War campaigns. Recently, I looked at Human Interest Stories from Antietam and promised to provide a few more stories from the book. This is the last of four entries I hope to devote to the subject. I’ll include a vignette from each chapter of the book. Please note this series can be purchased from Colecraft Books.

Chapter 4: The Aftermath

Pg. 85

One raw recruit in the Fifth New York, a soldier only a week, wandered off from his regiment in the days after the battle “to discover what was new.” In his rambles, he happened upon a large house with an inviting open window. With the curiosity of youth, he walked over to it and raised his head above the sill. He was startled as the gory stump of a human arm was suddenly thrust in his face, and a voice from inside the house commanded, “Young man, take this away and bury it!” The recruit walked back to his regiment sick to his stomach, for he had unknowingly stumbled across one of the many homes that had been converted into field hospitals. Wiser for his efforts, he did no more sightseeing at Antietam.

Alfred Davenport, Camp and Field Life of the Fifth New York Volunteer Infantry: (Duryee Zouaves). (New York: Dick and Fitzgerald, 1879).

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Human Interest Stories From Antietam: Vignette 4

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Dave Powell posted an excellent and lengthy response to my recent review of Mark Grimsley’s The Hard Hand of War in the comments section following the entry.  Dave brings up a great point about the lack of studies examining Confederate soldiers’ destruction of their own civilian property.  In order to allow the most people to see it, I’ve posted it below. Take a look:

Dave Powell // Apr 9, 2008 at 6:04 am

Brett and Drew,

One of the problems I have with most examinations of Sherman’s March is the almost complete lack of discussion about Rebel destruction. While trying to figure out – house by house, as it were – who was responsible for every act is impossible, the responsibility that Wheeler’s cavalry must bear is usually mentioned only in passing, if at all.

In fact, Wheeler destroyed vast amounts of public property. He was ordered to. In addition, however, his command was among the most undisciplined of all ACW regular troops (excepting guerrilla bands) and they commited widespread personal destruction & looting as well. One of my favorite examples? A letter from an officer in Terry’s Texas Rangers sending home a set of silver candlesticks he ‘foraged.’ he wrote this letter in late 64, outside Savannah. Where do you suppose he found those candlesticks?

The conduct of Wheeler’s men at the time drew such outrage from the locals that it prompted CSA congressional investigations and similar efforts from Confederate military authorities. Col. Roman, Beuaregard’s chief of staff, wrote a damning report in Jan 65 on the lack of discipline in Wheeler’s ranks.

There are similar stories from earlier in the war: the sack of Cleveland Tenn by Rebel cav in Sept 1863, for example.

This is all not to say that we should not look at the realities of Federal “hard war;” far from it. But it is also time to despel a lot of the romantic notions surrounding Confederate troops defending their homes and hearths.

War is a brutalizing affair. Just as in the middle ages, when an army came by, whether on Chevauchee or not, it usually mattered little to the unfortunate civilians caught in the path which ’side’ visited.

Dave Powell

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Dave Powell Comments on The Hard Hand of War

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Fellow blogger Scott Mingus has been writing a series of books on “Human Interest Stories” of various Civil War campaigns. Recently, I looked at Human Interest Stories from Antietam and promised to provide a few more stories from the book. This is the third of four entries I hope to devote to the subject. I’ll include a vignette from each chapter of the book. Please note this series can be purchased from Colecraft Books.

Chapter 3: Antietam

Pg. 57

Struck in their left flank about 9:30 a.m. by a savage surprise counterattack, Sedgwick’s three brigades quickly melted, suffereing some 2,200 casualties in less than twenty minutes. The surviving Federals were sent flying to the rear, seeking shelter wherever they could find it. Among the more fortunate soldiers was George F. Fletcher of the Fifteenth Massachusetts. His Company H was utterly devastated, with only nine of sixty-two men making it back to the rear lines without injury. One of his brothers was killed, but George had somehow remained unhurt in the torrent of projectiles, despite a very close call. Shortly before the battle, the regiment’s mail had been delivered, but the men had no time to scan through it. Fletcher had folded a copy of Harper’s Weekly several times into a compact rectangle and placed it in his blouse pocket, intending to read it later. Jolted by a sudden blow to the chest, he found that he had not been injured. A Confederate Minie ball had struck him in the pocket and pierced the outer layers of the folded newspaper. Its thickness had blunted the impact of the bullet and saved his life. His luck would run out less than a year later, when Fletcher was killed at the Battle of Gettysburg defending against Pickett’s Charge.

Andrew E. Ford, The Story of the Fifteenth Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War 1861-1864. (Clinton, Massachusetts: Press of W.J. Coulter, 1898).

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Human Interest Stories From Antietam: Vignette 3

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In an interesting coincidence, Mark Grimsley blogged about his recent remarks at the March 29 Organization of American Historians round table. Why coincidence you say? Because Mark spoke about the destructiveness of the Civil War around the same time I was reviewing and blogging about The Hard Hand of War, his book on the subject. In his blog entry, Mark had some interesting thoughts, including his hope for further detailed local studies of the war’s destructive nature:

In his review of The Hard Hand of War, Royster opined that a struggle that killed two percent of the U.S. population was an odd place to look for restraint in war. The impact of that level of death has recently been explored in Drew Faust’s This Republic of Suffering (2008). I don’t think that we have seen the last of works that analyze the destructiveness of the Civil War. It is too obvious and important an aspect of the conflict to be exhausted any time soon. But in terms of fertile ground for further research, I personally would welcome detailed micro histories of the destructive war as it played out in specific localities. We have far too few of these, and the ones that do exist tend to be written by lay students of the conflict and, by and large, show little engagement with the larger conversation on this subject.

Drew Wagenhoffer commented after the blog entry that he too would like to see more studies on this subject. I third that notion. Further investigation would help paint a clearer picture of just how destructive the war was when soldiers were in close proximity to civilians during difficult situations. Grimsley does a creditable job with his own examples of this, but the level of detail about specific incidents in a book focusing on the entire war cannot be great. It would be very interesting to me personally to see if such studies bear out the larger theme presented in The Hard Hand of War regarding the restraint shown by Union soldiers in most cases.

In his last few paragraphs, Mark mentioned Earl J. Hess’ upcoming book The Rifle Musket in the Civil War, a book Mark believes will essentially and convincingly establish Paddy Griffith’s thoughts in Battle Tactics of the Civil War as the orthodox view on the subject of the Civil War as the last of the Napoleonic Wars. This was the first mention of Hess’ book I had read, and the implications Mark indicates will, if true, make this an extremely important new piece of scholarship. I quote directly from Mark’s post below:

Alternatively, the conflict can be seen as the last of the Napoleonic wars — indeed, as what Paddy Griffith suggestively called “a badly fought Napoleonic war.” In Battle Tactics of the Civil War (1989), Griffith argued that the rifled musket was at best an incremental improvement over the smoothbore musket, and that the linear tactics used in the war were therefore appropriate, not outmoded as the prevailing orthodoxy maintained. The key problem, he argued, was that Civil War units lacked the tactical sophistication to execute a Napoleonic assault successfully.

In so doing, Griffith took direct aim at Grady McWhiney and Perry Jamieson’s Attack and Die (1982), the best study to emphasize the transformational impact of the rifled musket. Initially Civil War military historians greeted his thesis with skepticism, partly because of his iconoclastic presentation and partly because of his limited evidence base. Over time, however, they have taken it with increasing seriousness, and Earl J. Hess’s forthcoming The Rifle Musket in the Civil War largely confirms Griffith’s thesis. In fact, Hess’s book is so well executed that upon publication it will become the standard work on the subject, and the Griffith thesis will become the new orthodoxy.

The rifled musket issue may sound arcane to the non-military historians in the room, so it is perhaps worth underscoring that their low velocity, soft lead bullets were the single biggest factor in making the America of the 1860s a “republic of suffering.” It is a simple but profound argument against the tendency to dismiss the battlefield dimension of the Civil War as arcane “drums and trumpets” history.

I’d like to close off this entry by thanking Mark for his mention of my review. I’m glad you enjoyed reading it Mark. I know I enjoyed reading the book. It provided much food for thought for sure.

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Further Discussion on Mark Grimsley’s The Hard Hand of War

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Fellow blogger Scott Mingus has been writing a series of books on “Human Interest Stories” of various Civil War campaigns. Recently, I looked at Human Interest Stories from Antietam and promised to provide a few more stories from the book. This is the second of four entries I hope to devote to the subject. I’ll include a vignette from each chapter of the book. Please note this series can be purchased from Colecraft Books.

Chapter 2: South Mountain and Harper’s Ferry

Pg. 32-33

The Confederates held a strong position protecting Turner’s Gap with infantry in several key locations on the heights. The Federal soldiers were compelled to carry the seemingly impregnable position by direct assault. One group of Rebels occupied a ledge on the extreme right, unseen to the Union attackers. They unleashed a volley at Col. Hugh W. McNeil and a small contingent of the Thirteenth Pennsylvania Reserves of the I Corps. McNeil instantly commanded, “Pour your fire upon those rocks!” His men hesitated, as they were not accustomed to receive a collective order, as they had always picked their individual targets. “Fire!” thundered the colonel; “I tell you to fire on those rocks!” The men obeyed, spraying balls at the unseen foe up the mountainside.

For some time an irregular fire was kept up, with the Bucktails (so named for the deer tails worn in their hats) sheltering themselves as best they could behind trees and rocks. McNeil finally caught sight of two Rebs peering through an opening in the impromptu works, getting ready to aim. The eyes of the men followed their commander and half a dozen breech-loading rifles were leveled in that direction.

“Wait a minute,” said the colonel, “I will try my hand. There is nothing like killing two birds with one stone.” The two Confederates were not in a straight line, but one stood a little distance back of the other, while just in front of the foremost was a slanting rock. Colonel McNeil seized a rifle, raised it, glanced a moment along the polished barrel; a loud report followed, and both Rebels disappeared. At that moment, a loud cheer from the rear lines rent the air. “All is right now”, cried McNeil; “Charge the rascals!”

The men sprang up among the rocks in an instant. The Confederates turned to run, but encountered another detachment of the Bucktails and were obliged to surrender. Not a man of them escaped. Everyone then finally saw the object of the colonel’s order to fire randomly among the rocks. He had sent a party around to the rear and used the random fire from downhill to attract their attention. It was a perfect success. The two Rebels by the opening in the ledge were fund lying there stiff and cold. McNeil’s bullet had struck the slanting rock in front of them, glanced off, and had amazingly passed through both their heads. There the lump of lead lay beside them, flattened. McNeil picked it up and put it in his pocket as a souvenir of South Mountain.

Hugh McNeill was still carrying the “lucky” bullet a few days later when he was killed at Antietam.

Frank Moore, Anecdotes, Poetry, and Incidents of the War: North and South 1860-1865. (New York: Publication office, Bible house, J. Porteus, agent, 1867).

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Human Interest Stories From Antietam: Vignette 2

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