The Brave Men of Company A

The Forty-First Ohio Volunteer Infantry

Edward S. Cooper

On August 26, 1861, one hundred volunteers met at Camp Wood and formed Company A. These men, for the most part, were well educated and left to us a series of letters to families and friends, diaries, letters to their local newspapers, official reports, and talks they gave after the war at reunions. Their correspondence differs from most others in that they do not simply record the temperature and what they had to eat. The story the correspondence of Company A tells allows the reader to know what it was really like to be a volunteer soldier. The men describe what they saw from their vantage points on the parts of the battlefield they could see. Their letters cover their discussions and arguments concerning slavery, the national draft, the right of “citizen soldiers” to confiscate property, and the use of blacks in combat. On a very personal level they describe what it was like to be captured and spend time in Confederate prisons awaiting exchange, what they felt when they had to leave wounded or dead comrades on the field when they had to retreat, whether to reenlist, the punishments they had to endure, the witnessing of military executions, and whether to mutiny. There are marvellous descriptions of the unauthorized truces the men arranged with the Confederates to trade tobacco for coffee or to bathe in a stream separating them.

University Press Copublishing Division / Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

Pages: 216 • Trim: 6½ x 9½

978-1-61147-767-2 • Hardback • February 2015 • $82.00 • (£63.00)

978-1-61147-768-9 • eBook • February 2015 • $77.50 • (£60.00)

Subjects: History / United States / Civil War Period (1850-1877), History / Military / General, History / United States / General

The Brave Men of Company A

The Forty-First Ohio Volunteer Infantry

Hardback

eBook

Summary

On August 26, 1861, one hundred volunteers met at Camp Wood and formed Company A. These men, for the most part, were well educated and left to us a series of letters to families and friends, diaries, letters to their local newspapers, official reports, and talks they gave after the war at reunions. Their correspondence differs from most others in that they do not simply record the temperature and what they had to eat. The story the correspondence of Company A tells allows the reader to know what it was really like to be a volunteer soldier. The men describe what they saw from their vantage points on the parts of the battlefield they could see. Their letters cover their discussions and arguments concerning slavery, the national draft, the right of “citizen soldiers” to confiscate property, and the use of blacks in combat. On a very personal level they describe what it was like to be captured and spend time in Confederate prisons awaiting exchange, what they felt when they had to leave wounded or dead comrades on the field when they had to retreat, whether to reenlist, the punishments they had to endure, the witnessing of military executions, and whether to mutiny. There are marvellous descriptions of the unauthorized truces the men arranged with the Confederates to trade tobacco for coffee or to bathe in a stream separating them.

Details

University Press Copublishing Division / Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

Pages: 216 • Trim: 6½ x 9½

978-1-61147-767-2 • Hardback • February 2015 • $82.00 • (£63.00)

978-1-61147-768-9 • eBook • February 2015 • $77.50 • (£60.00)

Subjects: History / United States / Civil War Period (1850-1877), History / Military / General, History / United States / General

Author

Edward S. Cooper is author of Louis Trezevant Wigfall: The Disintegration of the Union and Collapse of the Confederacy (2012) and Traitors: The Secession Period, November 1860-July 1861.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Forming Company A
2. Gallipolis
3. Camp Wickliffe
4. Shiloh
5. Chasing Confederates
6. Stones River
7. Chickamauga
8. Brown’s Ferry
9. Orchard Knob
10. Missionary Ridge
11. Reenlist
12. Pickett’s Mill
13. Atlanta
14. Overton Knob
15. Texas
16. Biographical Notes
Bibliography
Index

The Brave Men of Company A

The Forty-First Ohio Volunteer Infantry

Edward S. Cooper

The Brave Men of Company A

The Forty-First Ohio Volunteer Infantry

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