Alpheus Williams is a figure who has intrigued me. I keep meaning to read the book of his wartime letters to his wife/family first published back in 1959, and re-issued in paperback in 2011.
It's well worth reading, one of the best autobiographical books of the war. Except it's not an autobiography, it's letters driven by Williams in the moment.
Some of my personal favorite highlights --
June 2,1862: "The War Department has undertaken the management of the whole war from its bureau in Washington and it has a chronic trepidation that Washington City is in danger of being attacked. If we are not wholly destroyed by its policy, it is because Providence interposes to save us."
September 22, 1862: "My friends think I shall get a major generalship. I should if I was of the regular army; but not being such nor a graduated fool I suppose I shall remain a brigadier."
October 22, 1862: "I have been very busy turning over the command to Maj. Gen. Slocum, who has been assigned to it. He is a New Yorker, a graduate of West Point. Was on the Peninsula, of course. Nobody gets permanent command or promotion, I believe, unless he was on the Peninsula."
January 27,1863: "How long I shall be able to hold out under this oversloughing is very doubtful. Every such promotion over me, as Carl Schurz and the twenty others in the last list, is an insult."
January 2, 1864: "There is much secret history connected with the Gettysburg campaign which will some day be made public. The proceedings of a secret council of the corps commanders held the night before the enemy-crossed the river was at once divulged, and the remarks of Meade, Warren, and Pleasonton published to the world in full. It was for the interest of Meade that this publication should be made, and there is no doubt that publicity was given to it with his consent, if not through his direct instrumentality. There were other councils, however, the proceedings of which were not made public, and which never will be published with the consent of Gen. Meade. On the evening of July 2nd a council was called, and each corps commander was asked his opinion as to the propriety of falling back towards Washington that night. The majority opposed it, and after the vote was taken Meade declared that “Gettysburg was no place to risk a battle,” and there is no doubt that but for the decision of his corps commanders the army on the 3rd of July would have been in full retreat, and the 4th of July, 1863, instead of being a day of rejoicing throughout the North, would have been the darkest day ever known to our country."