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Book Reviews These are some reviews from a recent issue of
The Civil War News:
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A Confederate Yankee: The Journal of Edward William Drummond, A Confederate Soldier From Maine.
Edited by Roger S. Durham.
Illustrated, notes, bibliography, index, 160 pp., 2004. University of Tennessee Press, Communications Department, Knoxville, TN 37996, $30 plus shipping.
This is another addition to the volumes that address the question: “Why would Northern-born men fight for the South?” As historian and professor Peter S. Carmichael notes in the foreword when trying to explain why a Mainer fought for Georgia: “The power of place, more than anything else, shaped his most fundamental loyalties as it did for most nineteenth century Americans.” Well, that, and the fact that Edward Drummond married a Savannah native not long after he moved from Maine to take a clerking job in a trading company. Though only living in the South for two years before secession, Drummond threw his lot with the South although his brother and cousins joined Maine units. Drummond’s first posting was at Fort Pulaski, not far from his Savannah home. His first experience at combat was short as Pulaski was captured after bombardment in April 1862. After a stint at the Johnson’s Island, Ohio, prison camp, he was exchanged. Like many other Confederates, he rejoined the army and fought to the end of the war. It is interesting that Drummond talks about Northerners as any firebrand Southerner would have, though his Maine accent must have been jarring to the ears of coastal Georgians. When he is about to be exchanged, Drummond is excited about the coming opportunity to rejoin “our people,” meaning Southerners. Drummond did not live an exciting, battle-filled life. His diary describes his boredom at Fort Pulaski right up until he was captured. After his capture and imprisonment at Governors Island, New York, his entries liven up. In one entry he writes how New York ladies came to the prison site to eye the Confederates. Obtaining field glasses themselves, the prisoners return the eye, getting close enough with the field glasses that they could tell the difference between “artificial and natural red cheeks.” In another entry Drummond writes of getting drunk and having a pillow fight. He learns how to josh when he meets a supposed 7-foot-tall, 250-pound captain from North Carolina who describes himself as “the runt of his family and dwarf of his neighborhood.” Transferred to Johnson’s Island, Drummond’s diaries indicate a life that was not all that bad as prison camps go. He writes often of playing “ball” with 11-man teams. He does describe the shooting murder of a prisoner by a Union guard. Unfortunately, once Drummond returns to the service, his diary stops. With no entries, the editor reconstructs his service though official records and some experiences of his brother-in-law. Drummond died in Savannah, along with three of his four children, during a yellow fever epidemic in 1876. This diary demonstrates that the war was a personal experience for every soldier and no blanket explanations for what “caused” the war, or why men fought on either side, can ever be definitively given.
Clint Johnson
Clint Johnson's latest book is: Bull’s-Eyes And Misfires: 50 People Whose Obscure Efforts Shaped The American Civil War.
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