Happy Veteran’s Day
I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over
at My
Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2016. The challenge is to read
books that you already own.
A Volunteer's
Adventures: A Union Captain's Record of the Civil War - John William De
Forest
John William De Forest earned fame as a novelist after
the civil war and nowadays he is considered the first American realist. I have
not read his most famous work Miss Ravenel's Conversion, but may because this
memoir of his war experience was quite interesting and smoothly written. It consists
of letters to his wife and magazine articles that we wrote both during and
after the war.
Clearly De Forest was a highly educated man. He even knew
French so he was able to communicate with Cajuns while he was posted to
dangerous campaigning and tedious garrison duty in Louisiana. The siege of Port
Hudson, for instance, is narrated very clearly.
After that, he fought under Sheridan in the valleys of Virginia
and all his experience was grist to his literary mill. Some of the chapters are
letters, some magazine pieces, and others recasts of official corps history
that he was ordered to write as is federal plundering for food. I was surprised
that between paychecks, union officers often nearly starved on meagre rations.
The editor provided instructive introductions to the
chapters. I would recommend this account to serious students of the civil war.
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