Originally published in 1887, Hard Tack and Coffee quickly became a best seller, and is now considered one of the most important books written by a Civil War veteran. Some sample chapter headings reveal the breadth of subjects covered: How the Soldiers Were Sheltered Life in Tents Army Rations Offences and Punishments Raw Recruits Special Rations Boxes from Home Sutlers Foraging Corps and Corps Badges The Army Mule Hospitals and Ambulances Breaking Camp On the March Army Wagon-Trains Army Road and Bridge Builders Talking Flags and Torches Brilliantly written, dazzlingly detailed and from the mouth of someone who was actually there, Hardtack & Coffee - The Unwritten Story of Army Life is a must-read for Civil War buffs and military historians.
Anecdotes of a soldier, richly illustrated, including facsimilies of enlistment forms etc. Details all aspects of army operations and the life of soldiers of the era.
On an "I will if you will" dare, John Haley enlisted in the 17th Maine Regiment in August 1862 "for three years, unless sooner discharged." ("Discharged, shot, or starved" would have been more accurate, Haley later wryly observed.) Though a reluctant soldier at first, he served steadfastly in the Army of the Potomac for nearly three years, participating in some of the most significant battles of the Civil War. John Haley was not the only soldier to record each day's events in his journal by firelight or by picket's lantern, for his was a literate generation. He was unusual in that he later painstakingly rewrote his battlefield notes, "reflecting at leisure" and adding fascinating political and personal commentary to produce the remarkable volume he calls Haley's Chronicles.
Hardtack and Coffee: The Unwritten Story of Army Life (1887) is a memoir by John D. Billings. Billings was a veteran of the 10th Massachusetts Volunteer Light Artillery Battery in the American Civil War. Originally published in 1888, Hard Tack and Coffee quickly became a best seller, and is now considered one of the most important books written by a Civil War veteran. "Hard Tack and Coffee" is not about battles, but rather about how the common Union soldiers of the Civil War lived in camp and on the march. What would otherwise be a mundane subject is enlivened by Billings' humorous prose.
Company Aytch; Or, a Side Show of the Big Show is the personal memoir of American Civil War veteran Samuel “Sam” Rush Watkins. Often heralded as one of the most reliable and informative primary sources on the Civil War, Watkins describes his experiences during his service as an infantryman in the Confederate Army. In the early days of the war, Watkins enlisted in the Tennessee Infantry and served through the duration of the conflict, participating in many battles, including ones in Atlanta, Jonesboro, and Nashville. Profoundly, Watkins was one of only sixty-five men from the First Tennessee infantry, which recruited over three thousand men, to survive the war. Widely studied by Civil War historians, Company Aytch is valued for its portrayal of the experience of the common soldier. HarperTorch brings great works of non-fiction and the dramatic arts to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperTorch collection to build your digital library.
A senior military historian presents an unflinching account of the human costs of the Civil War. Many Americans, argues Michael C. C. Adams, tend to think of the Civil War as more glorious, less awful, than the reality. Millions of tourists flock to battlefields each year as vacation destinations, their perceptions of the war often shaped by reenactors who work hard for verisimilitude but who cannot ultimately simulate mutilation, madness, chronic disease, advanced physical decay. In Living Hell, Adams tries a different tack, clustering the voices of myriad actual participants on the firing line or in the hospital ward to create a virtual historical reenactment. Perhaps because the United States has not seen conventional war on its own soil since 1865, the collective memory of its horror has faded, so that we have sanitized and romanticized even the experience of the Civil War. Neither film nor reenactment can fully capture the hard truth of the four-year conflict. Living Hell presents a stark portrait of the human costs of the Civil War and gives readers a more accurate appreciation of its profound and lasting consequences. Adams examines the sharp contrast between the expectations of recruits versus the realities of communal living, the enormous problems of dirt and exposure, poor diet, malnutrition, and disease. He describes the slaughter produced by close-order combat, the difficulties of cleaning up the battlefields—where tens of thousands of dead and wounded often lay in an area of only a few square miles—and the resulting psychological damage survivors experienced. Drawing extensively on letters and memoirs of individual soldiers, Adams assembles vivid accounts of the distress Confederate and Union soldiers faced daily: sickness, exhaustion, hunger, devastating injuries, and makeshift hospitals where saws were often the medical instrument of choice. Inverting Robert E. Lee’s famous line about war, Adams suggests that too many Americans become fond of war out of ignorance of its terrors. Providing a powerful counterpoint to Civil War glorification, Living Hell echoes William Tecumseh Sherman’s comment that war is cruelty and cannot be refined. Praise for Our Masters the Rebels: A Speculation on Union Military Failure in the East, 1861–1865 "This excellent and provocative work concludes with a chapter suggesting how the image of Southern military superiority endured in spite of defeat."—Civil War History "Adams's imaginative connections between culture and combat provide a forceful reminder that Civil War military history belongs not in an encapsulated realm, with its own categories and arcane language, but at the center of the study of the intellectual, social, and psychological currents that prevailed in the mid-nineteenth century."—Journal of American History Praise for The Best War Ever: America and World War II "Adams has a real gift for efficiently explaining complex historical problems."—Reviews in American History "Not only is this mythologizing bad history, says Adams, it is dangerous as well. Surrounding the war with an aura of nostalgia both fosters the delusion that war can cure our social ills and makes us strong again, and weakens confidence in our ability to act effectively in our own time."—Journal of Military History
