Third Alabama! The Civil War Memoir of Brigadier General Cullen Andrews Battle, CSA. (Book Reviews).

Third Alabama! The Civil War Memoir of Brigadier General Cullen Andrews Battle, CSA. Edited by Brandon H. Beck. (Tuscaloosa and London: University of Alabama Press, c. 2000. Pp. xx, 180. $29.95, ISBN 0-8173-1001-0.)

Publishers seeking to cater to--and cash in on--popular and scholarly interest in the Civil War have churned out a seemingly endless stream of books containing letters, diaries, and memoirs written by the people who experienced the war in uniform. These works have varied in quality and value to students of the war. Many, unfortunately, have been distinguished by inadequate editing and offer little of use to students of the war other than a few interesting quotes. Each of the three books under review here, however, offers primary source material that will be of value and interest to students of the war, not least because they have benefited from superlative editing.

Quest for a Star is a collection of letters and diaries written by Francis T. Sherman and edited by C. Knight Aldrich. The son of the Democratic mayor of Chicago (but not a direct relative of General William T. Sherman), Francis Sherman parlayed his political connections into an officer's commission in 1861 and eventually achieved command of a brigade, although a general's star eluded him until after the war was over. He took part in the campaigns that produced the battles of Perryville, Stones River, and Chattanooga, was captured during the Atlanta campaign, and after enduring three months as a prisoner, served on the staff of Philip Sheridan during the last months of the war.

Like Sherman, staunch Republican John Quincy Adams Campbell, whose wartime writings are published in The Union Must Stand, witnessed the Federal triumph at Chattanooga. Campbell, however, was part of the force dispatched by the Union high command from Mississippi to rescue Sherman's Army of the Cumberland after its defeat at Chickamauga. Lacking the political connections Sherman enjoyed, Campbell began the war as an enlisted man with the Fifth Iowa Volunteer Infantry. In 1862 he participated in operations against Island No. 10 on the Mississippi River and Corinth, saw his first major battle at Iuka, and managed to secure field promotion to lieutenant. He then took part in Ulysses S. Grant's triumphant campaign against Vicksburg before heading to East Tennessee to help Grant defeat Braxton Bragg at Chattanooga. During the Atlanta campaign, Campbell helped defend the Federal rear in Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia. His service to the Union ended when he resigned his commission in November 1864 and returned home to take care of his recently widowed mother.

Both Sherman and Campbell copiously documented their war experiences in diaries and letters to loved ones back home that make for excellent reading. Not only were these two men keen observers of events, whose vivid descriptions of soldier life and accounts of the battles and campaigns in which they participated will be of tremendous value to students of the war in the West; but they were also frank, quotable, and opinionated men. In their letters and diaries they did not hesitate to express their attitudes toward life in the army, politics, slavery, the South and its people, the merits of various generals, and the virtues of the Union cause.

The editors of Sherman's and Campbell's writings deserve much praise for their efforts. The introductions and notes for both books are highly readable, thoroughly researched, insightful, and offer a wealth of information on Campbell, Sherman, and the military operations described in their writings. Scholars of the common soldier will especially find value in Mark Grimsley and Todd D. Miller's effort to place the material in Campbell's writings in the context of recent debates among historians over the cultural, social, political, and institutional dynamics that motivated and sustained the soldiers who fought in America's bloodiest war. Both books are sure to leave readers looking forward to future volumes in the University of Tennessee Press's fine Voices of the Civil War series.

Although still quite good, Third Alabama!, the memoirs of Confederate general Cullen Andrews Battle, is not in the same league as the writings of either Sherman or Campbell. A prominent Alabama lawyer before the war, Battle was an enthusiastic proponent of secession (for which he offered no apology whatsoever in his memoirs) and began the war as major of the Third Alabama Infantry Regiment. Battle received his first taste of combat and ascended to regimental command at Seven Pines (Fair Oaks). He then led the Third Alabama through the battles of Malvern Hill, South Mountain, and Gettysburg but missed Second Manassas, Antietam, and Chancellorsville. Promoted to brigadier general after Gettysburg, he led a brigade in battles at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Third Winchester, Fisher's Hill, and Cedar Creek. At Cedar Creek he received his third wound of the war, which kept him from the field for the rest of the conflict.

Like Aldrich, Grimsley, and Miller, Brandon H. Beck has done an excellent job editing this work. However, the material he had to work with, although interesting, is of much more limited value than Campbell's or Sherman's writings. Not intended to be a comprehensive account of his Civil War service but rather a chronicle and celebration of his experiences and connection with the Third Alabama, Battle's memoir is fairly brief and selective in its coverage. It offers some interesting anecdotes and is a good read, but, as Beck concedes in his introduction, "[r]eaders will wish [Battle] had written more" (p. xix). Battle's work does not, unfortunately, offer those already familiar with the war in the East a great deal of new information or insight into the Army of Northern Virginia, its operations, or the personalities that shaped its history. Nonetheless, it is interesting to see a Confederate officer reflect on the war years, with (as usual) the horror of battle and misery of camp glossed over, southern heroism and battlefield skill celebrated, and the disadvantage in numbers with which Robert E. Lee and the knights of the Lost Cause had to contend considerably exaggerated.

All in all, these three books are fine contributions to Civil War literature. Serious scholars and casual readers alike, especially those with a taste for first-person accounts of the war, will find them useful and enjoyable.