AOP regimental history suggestions?

JerryD

2nd Lieutenant
Joined
Aug 23, 2021
Recently finished reading the excellent regimental history of the 30th North Carolina Infantry and have really enjoyed taking the book to local battlefields and standing where the regiment fought and reading what the soldiers had to say about that battle. Now I would like to find a Union regiment for the same treatment. Since I live in the east I am looking for a regiment that spent the war in the AOP, or at least the Eastern Theatre. I have read histories on the Iron Brigade and the Irish Brigade, so would prefer not any regiments in those brigades. Really looking for a history that has a lot of first person accounts from the soldiers. Any suggestions?
 
You don't specify whether it should be a history by a member of the unit or a modern history so I offer both.

The 8th Ohio had two regimental histories written by members. The first is by Lt. Col. Franklin Sawyer, A Military History of the 8th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, 1881. Reprinted by Blue Acorn Press 1994. The other was by Lt. Francis Galway, The Valiant Hours, Stackpole Books, 1961. There has not been a modern reprint of this book. The 8th started in the Shenandoah Valley and was part of the Battle of Kernstown early in 1862. The transferred to the AOTP later that summer and was at the Sunken Road at Antietam and part of Samuel Carroll's 2nd Corps "Gibraltar brigade" with the 4th OH, 7th WV, and 14th IN at Gettysburg.

The related modern history on my shelf is Nancy Baxter's history of the 14th Indiana, The Gallant Fourteenth (1980). While not an excessively scholarly work, she uses good primary sources and traces the unit's participation in the war from 1861-65.

Hope these get your started.
 
Recently finished reading the excellent regimental history of the 30th North Carolina Infantry and have really enjoyed taking the book to local battlefields and standing where the regiment fought and reading what the soldiers had to say about that battle. Now I would like to find a Union regiment for the same treatment. Since I live in the east I am looking for a regiment that spent the war in the AOP, or at least the Eastern Theatre. I have read histories on the Iron Brigade and the Irish Brigade, so would prefer not any regiments in those brigades. Really looking for a history that has a lot of first person accounts from the soldiers. Any suggestions?
I think you will find Miller's Harvard's Civil War about the 20th Massachusetts fills what you're looking for. It was in the A of the P from the gitgo and was in all the big fights. It's the regiment Oliver Wendell Holmes. Jr served in before becoming a corps staff officer and in which he was wounded three times. The book is excellent and is a very readable modern history but well-researched at the same time.
 
You don't specify whether it should be a history by a member of the unit or a modern history so I offer both.

The 8th Ohio had two regimental histories written by members. The first is by Lt. Col. Franklin Sawyer, A Military History of the 8th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, 1881. Reprinted by Blue Acorn Press 1994. The other was by Lt. Francis Galway, The Valiant Hours, Stackpole Books, 1961. There has not been a modern reprint of this book. The 8th started in the Shenandoah Valley and was part of the Battle of Kernstown early in 1862. The transferred to the AOTP later that summer and was at the Sunken Road at Antietam and part of Samuel Carroll's 2nd Corps "Gibraltar brigade" with the 4th OH, 7th WV, and 14th IN at Gettysburg.

The related modern history on my shelf is Nancy Baxter's history of the 14th Indiana, The Gallant Fourteenth (1980). While not an excessively scholarly work, she uses good primary sources and traces the unit's participation in the war from 1861-65.

Hope these get your started.
This actually might be perfect, as the 30th NC was in the Sunken Road as well. Thanks.
 
I think you will find Miller's Harvard's Civil War about the 20th Massachusetts fills what you're looking for. It was in the A of the P from the gitgo and was in all the big fights. It's the regiment Oliver Wendell Holmes. Jr served in before becoming a corps staff officer and in which he was wounded three times. The book is excellent and is a very readable modern history but well-researched at the same time.
Sounds like a good recommendation. Thanks!
 
Sounds like a good recommendation. Thanks!
FWIW, this is a point Drew Wagenhoffer made on his blogsite just after he started it about the book and its excellent maps (if you're not familiar with him, Drew's assessments of books are almost always spot on). Miller happened to pick a regiment that was in the forefront for almost the entire war, had a lot of well-known members, and turned out an awful lot of primary sources.

https://cwba.blogspot.com/2005/11/positive-trend-hopefully-in.html
 
Another recommendation is Paul G. Zeller's The Second Vermont Volunteer Infantry Regiment, 1861-1865. The 2nd Vermont served from Bull Run to Appomattox and saw heavy action in 1862 and 1864.

Ryan
 
Mother, May You Never See the Sights I Have Seen: The Fifty-Seventh Massachusetts Veteran Volunteers in the Army of the Potomac, 1864-1865 by Warren Wilkinson is one of my favorites. New regiment gets obliterated from the Wilderness to the Siege of Petersburg. Here's the publicity blurb:
This comprehensive, muster-to-disbandment account of a regiment involved in Ulysses S. Grant's Overland campaign is an unusually detailed study of men at war, as well as a superb unit history. In the thick of the battles of Spotsylvania, the Wilderness and Petersburg, the 57th Massachusetts probably suffered more casualties than any other in the Army of the Potomac. Wilkinson, a long-time student of the Civil War, quotes diaries and letters in which soldiers discuss weapons, uniforms, rations, sanitation, the enemy, rumors, battles, wounds, spiritual crises, and their diminishing chances of returning home alive. One wonders if any other regiment in history contained so many articulate writers. The book includes a fresh look at the Crater incident during the Petersburg siege, in which black soldiers were massacred by Confederates. An appendix includes mini-biographies of each member of the 57th--more than 1000 men. Photos.
 
Mother, May You Never See the Sights I Have Seen: The Fifty-Seventh Massachusetts Veteran Volunteers in the Army of the Potomac, 1864-1865 by Warren Wilkinson is one of my favorites. New regiment gets obliterated from the Wilderness to the Siege of Petersburg. Here's the publicity blurb:
Could not agree more! One of the best modern regimental histories ever written.
 
Recently finished reading the excellent regimental history of the 30th North Carolina Infantry and have really enjoyed taking the book to local battlefields and standing where the regiment fought and reading what the soldiers had to say about that battle. Now I would like to find a Union regiment for the same treatment. Since I live in the east I am looking for a regiment that spent the war in the AOP, or at least the Eastern Theatre. I have read histories on the Iron Brigade and the Irish Brigade, so would prefer not any regiments in those brigades. Really looking for a history that has a lot of first person accounts from the soldiers. Any suggestions?
Try the 2nd South Carolina regiment. I’m sure a legal mind such as yours could dive the depths of whether or not the regiment was even legal! I hear Harriet Tubman herself even visited the regiment.
 
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