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Book Reviews These are some reviews from a recent issue of
The Civil War News:
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77th New York Volunteers: “Sojering in the VI Corps,”
by Robert F. Morrow Jr.
Illustrated, appendix, endnotes, bibliography, index, 273 pp., 2004. White Mane Books, P.O. Box 708, Shippensburg, PA 17257-0708, $29.95 plus shipping.
In the fall of 1861 men from the upstate New York counties of Essex, Fulton, and Saratoga volunteered to serve in a regiment of infantry raised by Congressman James McKean. As the various regiments completed their enrollment and were mustered into federal service, they were assigned a numerical designation based upon their chronological acceptance. However, the men of this unit, predominantly from Saratoga County, although they should have been numbered in the 30s, requested to be the 77th New York Volunteers in honor of the Revolutionary War battle fought at Saratoga in 1777. They were known by the sobriquet “The Bemis Heights Regiment” for the ridge on which the battle was engaged. This was the only New York State unit allowed to request a number out of sequence. Assigned to McClellan’s force assembling in Washington, The Bemis Heights Regiment experienced their baptism of fire at Yorktown on the Peninsula. The regiment was engaged in more than 50 actions in the Sixth Corps of the Army of the Potomac. Of over 1,400 men who were enrolled in the regiment, fewer than 600 returned home following the Grand Review in Washington at the conclusion of the war. Robert F. Morrow Jr. has a special interest in the 77th New York since his great-great- grandfather served in its ranks and survived the war. Although married with two children and 36 years old, William A. Baker enlisted as a teamster. Sparked by this personal connection, Morrow has been working for 15 years on this, his first book. The author’s book is the first full-length study of The Bemis Heights Regiment, excluding the memoirs of the regimental surgeon George T. Stevens, who wrote Three Years in the Sixth Corps (1866, revised 1870). It is unfortunate that Morrow’s first draft of this study, numbering some 600 pages, had to be pared down to its present length of approximately 200 pages of actual text. A number of primary sources located and used by the author furnish some insight into the lives of the men who served in the regiment; however, there are few detailed anecdotes presented. According to the sources cited, the author failed to use either the National Archives or the 77th New York newspaper folder of the New York State Military Museum, which includes 28 items. “Sojering in the VI Corps” is a good introductory study of the 77th New York Volunteers and its campaigns. A more detailed account with greater use of primary sources and anecdotes needs to be published. While an appendix provides a listing of men who served in the unit along with many images of men who served in the 77th throughout the text, the books lacks the depth that perhaps the earlier draft had. The movements of the regiment during its numerous actions are difficult to follow since there are no maps, and the flow of the narrative is greatly hampered by the short choppy sentence structure. Those who enjoy reading a regimental history rich in human-interest accounts and more depth with maps will find “Sojering in the VI Corps” disappointing. However, the book does successfully supply a brief account of the experiences of the members of the Sixth Corps from the Peninsula Campaign to Appomattox.
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.
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