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Book Reviews These are some reviews from a recent issue of
The Civil War News:
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A Magnificent Irishman from Appalachia: The Letters of Lt. James Gildea, First Ohio Light Artillery, Battery L
Julian Mohr; edited by Gary Piatt
Illustrated, appendix, bibliography, index, 115 pp., 2003. Little Miami Publishing Co., P.O. Box 588, Milford OH 45150-0588; $17.95 ppd.
This slim volume came about when the author found an old Scioto County, Ohio, history. Combining that interest with a love of the Civil War led Julian Mohr to the First Ohio Light Artillery. Among the papers of James Barnett, commander of the First Ohio Light, Mohr saw material from a Lt. James Gildea relating his memories of service in the unit. Mohr edited and published the reminiscences as A Magnificent Irishman from Appalachia. Gildea, an Irish immigrant, was a steam fitter from Portsmouth, Ohio, who enlisted in 1861 in Battery L. His accounts, designed to aid Barnett in writing a history of the First Ohio, relate his war experiences including service in the Shenandoah in 1862 and his wounding at Port Republic. Later the battery would join the Army of the Potomac and see action at Chancellorsville, Gettys-burg and Mine Run. Battery L was then rotated to the Washington defenses and saw action at Fort Stevens before returning to the Shenandoah for the 1864 campaign serving through Cedar Creek. Gildea’s accounts, related in 1890, are full of vivid descriptions of camp life, the toils of the march and the intensity of conflict. Author Mohr prefaces each chapter of the memoirs with a short overview of the military situation of which Battery L was a part. The book finishes with a short biography of both Gildea, who died in 1917, and Mohr, who passed away in 2002 before publication. There is also an appendix listing the actions in which Battery L was a participant and a roster of the men of the battery with their ages at enlistment. Although quite pricey for such a slim volume, A Magnificent Irishman is an enjoyable telling of life as an artilleryman in the Eastern Theater of the Civil War.
Kenneth D. William
Kenneth D. Williams is writ-ing a book on the 11th Pennsylvania Volunteers and is doing doctoral level work in American history. He has worked as a park ranger at Gettysburg National Military Park and Eisenhower National Historic Site.
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