Campaigning with ‘Uncle Billy’: The Civil War Memoirs of Sgt. Lyman S. Widney
Edited by Robert I. Girardi
(May 2010 Civil War News)

Bibliography, index, footnotes, 422 pp., 2008. Trafford Publishing Co., www.trafford.com, $29 (US) plus shipping.

This memoir is a descriptive and historically accurate record of Sgt. Lyman S. Widney of the 34th Illinois, Co. H, the Rock River Rifles.

Widney served virtually the entire Civil War in the Western Theater. He rose in rank from private to sergeant major and fought at Shiloh, Corinth, Stones River and in the Atlanta and Carolina campaigns. Although he was a regimental clerk, he was a better writer than might be expected of a farm boy and observant enough to explain the Federal command staff’s plans and thinking.

Widney provides excellent descriptions of what he witnessed, especially the battle of Stones River in late 1862, which ranks among the best of any such descriptions. Verbatim passages from Widney are included in the film narration at the Stones River National Battlefield visitor center.

Campaigning with ‘Uncle Billy’ benefits from numerous annotated footnotes added by editor Robert I. Girardi, a past president of the Civil War Round Table of Chicago. His explanatory notes support what the memoir records and explain at times what was happening to whom.

The book does not aspire to be a regimental history of the 34th Illinois, which has already been written. Rather, it works best as a detailed record of the typical western Federal soldier on campaign and helps solve some of the little mysteries regarding who had what, when and where.

Widney describes the inventory of goods and the prices of their brigade sutler, a man he derisively called “Shylock.” He notes that the first musket issued to him in early October 1861 was the “Springfield, .69 caliber, rifled musketwith a one ounce conical ball.”

This detail lends valuable insight as only 5 percent of U.S. Model 1842 muskets (14,182 out of 270,000) were rifled and sighted and issued with special conical ball ammunition in .69 caliber.

This volume stands as one of the better narratives by a western soldier documenting the details of his experience during the Civil War.

Reviewer: Craig L. Barry