Civil War Campaigns of the 10th New York Cavalry With One Soldier’s Personal Correspondences
By Ron Matteson

Illustrated, maps, endnotes, bibliography, index, softcover, 424 pp., 2007. Ron Matteson, 4625 Lewis Rd., Walworth, NY 14568, $29.95 plus shipping.

Reviewer: Michael Russert
Michael Russert, a member of the North Shore Round Table of Long Island and the Company of Military Historians, has a MALS plus 60 hours in American Studies. He is Coordinator of The New York State Veteran Oral History Program.

Review:
The 10th New York Cavalry, known as “The Porter Guard,” was organized in the rural counties of central New York State. Formed in the fall of 1861, eight companies ironically were assigned to spend several months during the winter/spring of 1861-1862 training in the environs of Gettysburg, Pa.

A veteran cavalry regiment, the unit served honorably in over 100 actions with the cavalry arm of the Army of the Potomac.

The author’s great-grandfather rode with the 10th Cavalry from its inception. Written as a unit history, the focus of Civil War Campaigns of the 10th New York Cavalry is the exchanges of correspondences between Justus Matteson, his future wife and other family members — a total of over 50 letters.  

Ron Matteson previously published the same letter collection in two editions, the most recent, 8 inches by 10 inches spiral bound, a paperback format entitled Justus in the Civil War (Second Edition, 1995). The question then, is how different is this volume from the previous publication?

First, of course, the 1995 edition has 127 pages and consists of just the letter exchanges between Justus Matteson and others, while this volume consists of 424 pages and is a regimental history focusing on the Matteson correspondences.

As the author notes, this 2007 edition is a “reprinting [of] the letters between Justus and Mary with information added from Preston [Noble D. Preston’s History of the Tenth Regiment, New York Volunteer Cavalry] and other Civil War sources.”

In actuality, Matteson’s Civil War Campaigns is primarily a compilation of first-hand accounts from a number of sources. The author borrowed extensively fromPreston’s 1892 history. Also used from the same source were Preston’s illustrations and maps.

Although cited in the bibliography, but not in the endnotes, the author made use of the Official Records reports and Phisterer’s New York in the War of the Rebellion for charts that accompany the text.

Twenty-five battle summaries from the online National Park Service Civil War Sites Advisory Commission were used along with the electronic source Wikipedia. The author himself observed why Wikipedia is not an acceptable source for a scholarly work, explaining it is “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.”

Published by an on-demand press, Civil War Campaigns of the 10th New York Cavalry is unfortunately marred by many of the faults of vanity publications. Matteson’s history remains an assemblage of primary sources focused on an exchange of family correspondences that does not advance much beyond his Second Edition of Justus in the Civil War and a reading of Preston’s History, which has been reprinted.