A REGIMENT OF IMMIGRANTS --THE 82ND ILLINOIS VOLUNTEER INFANTRY
THE 82nd ILLINOIS BOOKSTORE
I have included here my recommendations for further reading about the 82nd Illinois and more general aspects of the history of the Civil War. Please click on any of the individual links below to go directly to the ordering pages for these volumes at Amazon.com's online bookstore. If you would like to go directly to Amazon.com's home page and search through their huge book catalog, please click on the graphic above.
MELTING POT SOLDIERS: THE UNION'S ETHNIC REGIMENTS, BY WILLIAM L. BURTON
Melting Pot Soldiers is the story of the way immigrants responded to the drama of the Civil War. When the war began in 1861, there were, in most states in the North, large populations of immigrants (primarily from Western Europe) whose leaders were active in American politics at the local, state, and national levels. Just as native-born Americans, both individually and collectively, reacted to war, so did these newcomers. Ethnic politicians (and a few were women!) like their native-born counterparts, actively recruited young men into regiments—in this case regiments based upon the country of origin of the recruits. There were dozens of such regiments, mostly German and Irish, but also a Scandinavian unit, a polyglot outfit, and there was an attempt to form a Scottish regiment. Burton examines the impact ethnic leaders had during the war, both by their key role in the organization of their regiments and their post war political careers.
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LAST STAND IN THE CAROLINAS: THE BATTLE OF BENTONVILLE,BY MARK L. BRADLEY.
"Mark Bradley's narrative is crisp, his judgments trenchant, and the story itself compelling. 'Last Stand in the Carolinas: The Battle of Bentonville' will stand as the definitive history of what became the coda to Southern military operations." --WILLIAM C. DAVIS, author of "Battle at Bull Run" and "Jefferson Davis, The Man and His Hour." Bradley's book is an extraordinary account of the last major battle of the war, in which the 82nd Illinois played a significant role. The maps of the battle alone make the book worth owning.
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CHANCELLORSVILLE 1863 : THE SOULS OF THE BRAVE, BY ERNEST B. FURGURSON
For 130 years historians and military strategists have been obsessed by the battle of Chancellorsville. It began with an audaciously planned stroke by Union general Joe Hooker as he sent his army across the Rappahannock River and around Robert E. Lee's lines. It ended with that same army fleeing back in near total disarray -- and Hooker's reputation in ruins. This splendid account of Chancellorsville -- the first in more than 35 years -- explains Lee's most brilliant victory even as it places the battle within the larger canvas of the Civil War. Drawing on a wealth of first-hand sources, it creates a novelistic chronicle of tactics and characters while it retraces every thrust and parry of the two armies and the fateful decisions of their commanders, from Hooker's glaring display of moral weakness to the inspired risk-taking of Lee and Stonewall Jackson, who was mortally wounded by friendly fire. At once impassioned and gracefully balanced, Chancellorsville 1863 is a grand achievement in Civil War history.
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ATTACK OF STONEWALL JACKSON AT CHANCELLORSVILLE, BY AUGUSTUS C. HAMLIN, FRANK A. O'REILLY (INTRODUCTION)
Frank O'Reilly's insightful, twenty-one page introduction to Augustus C. Hamlin's rare 1896 work, originally entitled The Battle of Chancellorsvile: The Attack of Stonewall Jackson, gives it the status of a classic. Hamlin's work presents in a revisionist and more positive light the role of the Eleventh Corps at Chancellorsville. Frank O'Reilly is a graduate of, and guest lecturer at, Washington & Lee University. He has written widely on the war along the Rappahannock, and is the author of introductions to new editions of Phil Sheridan's memoirs and the history of the First Massachusetts Cavalry.
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THE MARCH TO THE SEA AND BEYOND: SHERMAN'S TROOPS IN THE SAVANNAH AND CAROLINAS CAMPAIGNS, BY JOSEPH T. GLATTHAAR
Glatthaar's wonderfully insightful study throws new light (based on deep research) on the men who followed Sherman from Atlanta to the sea. This work puts particular emphasis on the blending of the western armies of the Union with the men (like the 82nd Illinois) who had originally served with the Army of the Potomac in the Eastern theater.
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ILLINOIS IN THE CIVIL WAR, BY VICTOR HICKEN
Hicken's book is a very useful study of both the composition and the politics of Illinois' many Civil War volunteer regiments -- includes information on ethnic regiments and politics, including the 82nd Illinois. It provides a very useful overview of the activities of most of the Illinois regiments in the eastern and western fronts, and goes beyod that to dicuss the Illinois home front and the politics within the State during the War.
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THE SIGEL REGIMENT: A HISTORY OF THE TWENTY-SIXTH WISCONSIN VOLUNTEER INFANTRY, 1862-1865 BY JAMES S. PULA
This wonderful unit history covers the war experience of a fellow Eleventh Corps regiment of the 82nd, which endured the same challenges at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg and in the West. Pula's book contains a detailed history of this unique ethnic German unit that is listed as one of Fox's "Fighting 300" regiments. Pula has spent years researching this history and is an excellent writer. The unit was in the thick of the fighting at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, then virtually every battle thereafter in the western theater from the Atlanta Campaign through Bentonville. The book also has a detailed roster of the regiment.
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FOR CAUSE AND COMRADES: WHY MEN FOUGHT IN THE CIVIL WAR, BY
JAMES M. MCPHERSON
Consider a war in which 25,000 soldiers are killed or wounded in a single battle, as they were at Gettysburg, or 16,000 in a single day, as at Antietam. The degree of suffering and hardship during the American Civil War has been well documented and analyzed in books and films from Margaret Mitchell's fictional Gone with the Wind to Bell Irvin Wiley's classic studies of Civil War soldiers, The Life of Johnny Reb and The Life of Billy Yank. All these sources agree on the brutality of the combat, but what motivated soldiers to continue fighting under such bitter conditions is the cause of some controversy. Until recently, the common stance has been that soldiers enlisted out of economic need and stayed out of loyalty to their comrades. The respected Civil War historian James M. McPherson weighs in with a different point of view in For Cause and Comrades.
Professor McPherson posits that the common rank-and-file soldiers did indeed hold political and ideological beliefs that prodded them to enlist and to fight. His research is based on letters and diaries from 1,076 Union and Confederate soldiers. These reveal many motivations, but always they lead back to duty, honor, and a cause worth dying for. For Cause and Comrades is a fascinating exploration of the 19th-century mind--a mind, it seems, that differs profoundly from our own.
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FROM THE CANNON'S MOUTH: THE CIVIL WAR LETTERS OF GENERAL ALPHEUS S. WILLIAMS BY MILO M. QUAIFE (EDITOR), ALPHEUS S. WILLIAMS, GARY W. GALLAGHER (INTRODUCTION)
General Alpheus Williams was the commander of the 82nd Illinois' division and often of its corps (First Division, Twentieth Corps) when the regiment fought in the West under Sherman. This was after the 82nd's transfer from the Army of the Potomac in September-October 1863. Williams, also originally of the "eastern" Twelfth Corps, was an intelligent and insightful observer of Army life. He was particularly taken with the command confusion that often plagued the Federals, and had interesting comments to make besides about immigrant troops and the blending of eastern and western soldiers in Sherman's Twentieth Corps. Besides all that, Williams simply wrote plain old interesting letters!
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DECISION IN THE WEST: THE ATLANTA CAMPAIGN OF 1864 (MODERN WAR STUDIES) BY ALBERT CASTEL
This is a detailed history of one of the most grisly episodes of the Civil War and one in which the 82nd Illinois played a full role. Castel's monumental work provides a balanced treatment of the North's invasion of Atlanta, debunking many long-standing myths and misconceptions of the battle. The book is the first detailed history of the Atlanta Campaign since General Jacob D. Cox's version in 1862. Noted historian Castel provides a compelling overview, written in the present tense to give a sense of immediacy and realism, that demonstrates how Sherman's capture of Atlanta occurred and why it assured a Northern victory. Includes photos and maps.
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