South Carolina’s Military Organizations During the War Between the States, Vol. I: The Lowcountry and Pee Dee; Vol. II: The Midlands; Vol. III: The Upstate; and Vol. IV: Statewide Units, Militia and Reserves
Have you ever puzzled over whether the Dixie Rangers were a company in the 4th, or maybe it was the 5th, South Carolina Cavalry? Have you tried to sort out or distinguish the multiple South Carolina infantry regiments that bore the designation “1st” during the Civil War? Have you ever wondered how many cavalry regiments or artillery batteries the Palmetto State raised during the war? Or when and by what authority a particular South Carolina regiment was created, or who captained a specific company within the regiment? Readers who have wrestled with these and countless other questions respecting South Carolina troops during the Civil War will welcome Robert Seigler’s South Carolina’s Military Organizations During the War Between the States. In this four-volume set, Seigler traces the origins of South Carolina’s military units that were created shortly before and during the war, including militia, state troops and reserves as well as troops raised for Confederate army service. For every regiment, battalion and battery, Seigler describes when, where and under what legal authority each unit was created, and he summarizes its brigade affiliations and its major movements and engagements. Seigler also includes a thumbnail biography of the field officers in every unit as well as a wartime biography of each company’s captain. Appendices list organizations with unknown regimental or battalion affiliations and give the nicknames of every South Carolina company. The first three volumes in this series are organized by the region of the state where a particular unit was raised: the Lowcountry and the Pee Dee area, the Midlands or the Upstate. The fourth volume focuses on units like the Hampton Legion whose men were recruited from all parts of South Carolina, and it also reviews the state militia and reserve troops, irrespective of where they were organized. All four volumes begin with a 30-page overview that details the legal authority for the creation of each South Carolina military organization of the Civil War era. A complex web of state and Confederate legislative acts, secession convention resolutions, military or executive orders and assorted other legal authorities created these military organizations, and the overview concludes with a helpful chart summarizing the author’s detailed narrative. The inclusion of the same overview at the beginning of each volume, in addition to identical appendices and bibliographies at the end, makes it practicable for readers interested in only certain South Carolina military units to purchase individual volumes, a not insignificant consideration given the price (almost $140) of the full set. Each volume is illustrated with between 18 and 31 photographs of the officers cited in the text. The copious endnotes and lengthy bibliography attest to the high scholarship that the author brought to this work. Seigler gathered his information from unpublished manuscripts, diaries and correspondence, period newspapers and military service records as well as from published primary and secondary source materials. South Carolina’s Military Organizations During the War Between the States is not a book for the night stand; it is not intended to read like a novel. Nor does it advance new historical interpretations of the war. Instead, it is a unique reference work or research tool that provides an accurate, in-depth review of the history of the Civil War military organizations of the Palmetto State. The only comparable publications are over a century old and out of print. In summary, this reviewer highly recommends South Carolina’s Military Organizations During the War Between the States, both for institutional and individual research libraries and for readers with a strong interest in South Carolina’s Civil War troops. Reviewer: C. Michael Harrington is a member of the Houston Civil War Round Table and Civil War Aficionados. He has written several articles on South Carolina Confederates. A practicing lawyer, he has degrees in economics from Yale and Cambridge and a law degree from Harvard.
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Illustrated, appendices, endnotes, bibliography, index, softcover, 416 pp. (Vol. I), 448 pp. (Vol. II), 400 pp. (Vol. III), 384 pp. (Vol. IV), 2008. The History Press, 18 Percy St., Charleston, SC 29403, $34.99 per volume plus shipping.