Learning the Battle of Gettysburg: A Guide to the Official Records
By Benjamin Y. Dixon, Ph.D

Illustrated, Order of Battle, softcover, 144 pp., 2007. Thomas Publications, P.O. Box 3031, Gettysburg, PA 17325, $9.95 plus shipping.

Reviewer: Blake A. Magner
Blake A. Magner is the Book Review Editor of Civil War News. He makes his liv­ing as an editor, writer, car­tographer and photographer of Civil War history. He is author of At Peace With Honor: The Civil War Burials of Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Review:

The two volumes (technically three if you include the correspondence volume) of the Official Records pertaining to Gettysburg consist of 365 Union and 145 Confederate reports. With 128 volumes of the entire ORs, the lack of a comprehensive index is understandable, though modern writings have tried to improve on this situation.

Author Dixon’s Learning the Battle of Gettysburg also tries to correct this by listing many of the reports and the volume in which they are contained for the Gettysburg battle.

His guide is divided into several chapters beginning with an overview and background to the battle followed by chapters on Day One, Day Two, Day Three, the Aftermath, Miscellaneous Incidents and Events and two chapters containing “Interesting” quotes form the participants and an Order of Battle.

Each chapter contains a brief synopsis of the action taken that day which is followed by a breakdown of the action (Early’s Raid, Reynolds’ Death, Oak Ridge action, Little Round Top, Wheatfield, Bliss Farm, the Angle and Copse of Trees and Lee’s Retreat to name just a few). Each of these subsections lists the reports pertaining to the action along with the OR volume that report is listed in.

This volume does not provide the report itself but directs the reader to the report in the associated OR volume. Thus if you are interested in the death of Colonel Avery this guide indicates that the incident is mentioned in the report of Col. Godwin of Hoke’s Brigade and Maj. Tate’s report of the 6th North Carolina, and the volume each report is contained in along with the page numbers.

This is an interesting and helpful little volume that would be of use to anyone interested in the official reports of the battle of Gettysburg participants.

It should be remembered, however, that not all units submitted reports and that reports from the same unit may differ due to perspective and who wrote it, (the unit commander or, in the case of his wounding or death, one of his subordinates).