Civil War Stories Volume 1;
Tales of Everyday Soldiers and Civilians
By Greg Romaneck with Erin Elizabeth Romaneck
(August 2009 Civil War News)

Source notes, 303 pp., 2008. Heritage Books, 100 Railroad Ave., #104, Westminster, MD 21157, $29 plus shipping.

The trouble with books of this type, a collection of stories and profiles compiled from other original books, is the title. If you are a voracious reader of Civil War history, you can’t tell from the commonplace title if you already have this in your library unless you remember the names of the co-authors, who do have a unique last name.

Then again, how do you give a descriptive title to a book that covers so many different people in this short, easy-to-read and then put-it-down-for-awhile style?

One way of looking at this book is to think of it as a digest of many books that the reader may not have come across before this compilation and which the reader might want to read in more detail.

For instance, one of the early chapters details the experience of Union soldier Andrew Roy, who wrote a 1909 memoir of being wounded. The chapter in Civil War Stories is detailed enough about his gruesome wounding through the pelvis, but readers might like to track down the original memoir to read it in the man’s own words.

As the authors point out, most Civil War memoirs are mundane, but Roy’s book concentrated on his wounding and recovery, which is much rarer in Civil War literature.

Sometimes the chapters seem out of place, such as one compiling some instructions on how to raise a daughter, which was originally published in 1687, and published for the first time in the United States in 1847.

This chapter has nothing to do with any Civil War figure, but the authors include it in their book to make the case that proper young women would have followed the advice from the original book. This chapter gives readers a sense of 19th-century morals.

Sometimes the authors compile upwards of four sources to create a chapter such as the one on the effects on the civilian population after the battle of Gettysburg. The authors found some choice memories, such as the family who became ill after drinking water from their well.

Suspicious town authorities retrieved a thumb and a wrist from the shaft. Presumably the family dug themselves a new well.

This is not a book that Civil War historians will treasure in itself, but reading it may lead them to other books of which they had not been aware.

Reviewer:
Clint Johnson

Clint Johnson’s latest book is Pursuit: The Chase, Capture, Persecution and Surprising Release of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.