Member Review Co Aytch By Sam Watkins

[Jarhead628]

Hello all, so a few days ago I posted a thread to this forum asking people if they had any good Civil War memoir recommendations. I should mention I am very new to studying the Civil War, if you check out my new member post that will give you a good explanation.

Now there is one recommendation I got multiple times and that was Co Aytch by Sam Watkins. I was familiar Sam Watkins because he appears in Ken Burns documentary The Civil War a lot. So I decided to give his memoir a try first.

I listened to the audiobook version of Co Aytch while at work over the last couple days and I really enjoyed the book I thought it was great. I thought Watkins gave a very good and honest look at what life was like for the average confederate infantryman. I also found some of his descriptions of battle to be particularly brutal for example when Watkins describes helping wounded soldiers off the battlefield at Perryville.

After finishing Co Aytch I decided to do a little research on Watkins personal life. While trying to do my research I discovered that within the Civil War community a lot of people seem to be very skeptical towards Watkins memoir. It seems hard to verify some of the events that Watkins wrote about, For example Watkins meeting Robert E. Lee in Virginia in 1861 or him even being at the Battle of Franklin. Of course there are more examples, but those are the first two that come to my mind. I should also mention that in Ken Burns documentary it's mentioned that Sam Watkins didn't own slaves but upon doing my research I found out that Watkins father owned more than 100 enslaved people.

Overall I thought Watkins memoir does a good job describing the life of a regular Confederate infantryman and I found many of his descriptions of battle to be honest and haunting.

 

[jepridgen]

It is definitely a gritty look at a side of the war that was often overlooked in the early days when the focus was on general officer or higher ranking perspective. As far as meeting Lee, it would be hard to confirm or deny that. Watkins doesn't always get every event in perfect order since he put a lot of this down from memory or personal correspondence. A lot of men met Lee throughout the war, and I'm sure there wasn't a list kept of who each one was. If he does make minor errors, I don't think it takes away from his telling of the war.

As far as slave ownership, I believe his father owned them, not him. He was still young and unmarried, and I doubt he'd built up enough capital to own very much at all. Perhaps had the war ended differently or never been fought, he would have inherited them were his father to still be a slaveowner at that point. I didn't know his father owned that many. Thought his father had a bit smaller farming operation.

 

[Bruce Vail]

There have been many, many posts here at CWT about Watkins' credibility, or lack thereof. Consensus here is that his book is an accurate representation of life in the Confederate Army of the Tennessee, but that he is not always reliable on the specific details. The book resides in a shadow land between fact and tall tale.

 

[dlofting]

When memoirs are written long after the events they describe and there are no contemporary writings like diaries to draw on it's inevitable that some of the details will be incorrect.

 

[Drew]

Good insight above. I'd recommend the following:

Confederate Scout-Sniper, Berry Benson's account of his experience in the 1st South Carolina Infantry. He was everywhere and managed to escape from both Pt. Lookout Prison in Maryland and Camp Elmira in New York. The book was written by his daughter-in- law as a sort of oral history when he was on his death bed. No historian I know of has ever punched a hole in the facts as presented.

I Road with Stonewall, Henry Kid Douglas' account of his time with Virginia's Stonewall Brigade and its namesake Confederate General. Douglas was involved in post-war politics and some of his facts may be a little bit loose, but this is a very colorful, good-natured account of what a soldier's life was like during the War.

Hard Tack and Coffee: The Unwritten Story of Army Life, John Billings' story of Army life from the perspective of a Massachusetts Infantryman. This one is acclaimed in terms of what a Union soldier's life was.

Generals on all three sides of the War will take credit for victory and blame others for defeat. You are smart to want to hear from the soldiers who were there what was actually going on.

 

[Rusk County Avengers]

I'm a sceptic of Watkins. Even was a thread a couple years ago where I reviewed his memoir.

If it's the only memoir you've read, its believable and entertaining. If, like me, you read it after reading around a hundred other memoirs, its easy to spot he's a fraud. And I do mean fraud. It being a Confederate memoir makes his fraud easier to spot.

Also as I recollect, someone did some digging and found that not only was he not a private, but a Lieutenant, and he was listed as a deserter before even Franklin. Something along those lines.

I'm not out for fights, there's a lot of folks here who will defend him till their blue in the face, even throwing out stories of when he was writing crying it to prove their beliefs, but at the end of the day facts don't matter a bit to anyone. People beleive the "truths" they want to believe, and I can't say I'm willing to waste my time in fights over Watkins anymore.

 

[Bruce Vail]

I'm a sceptic of Watkins. Even was a thread a couple years ago where I reviewed his memoir.

If it's the only memoir you've read, its believable and entertaining. If, like me, you read it after reading around a hundred other memoirs, its easy to spot he's a fraud. And I do mean fraud. It being a Confederate memoir makes his fraud easier to spot.

Also as I recollect, someone did some digging and found that not only was he not a private, but a Lieutenant, and he was listed as a deserter before even Franklin. Something along those lines.

I'm not out for fights, there's a lot of folks here who will defend him till their blue in the face, even throwing out stories of when he was writing crying it to prove their beliefs, but at the end of the day facts don't matter a bit to anyone. People beleive the "truths" they want to believe, and I can't say I'm willing to waste my time in fights over Watkins anymore.

Well, fraud is strong term. There is documentary evidence that Watkins was enlisted in a fighting unit for much of the war. Some of his anecdotes are not credible, I agree, but there are also sections that ring quite true.

 

[Mark Harden]

Watkins posed as a poor, uneducated soldier but was actually quite literate and not by any means poor, so his memoir must be viewed with more than the usual skepticism. I laugh when people cite him as a source for Joseph Johnston being a great general, while in the same memoir, Watkins also claims that Leonidas Polk, too, was a great general.

 

[Johnny_Reb_1865]

I'm a sceptic of Watkins. Even was a thread a couple years ago where I reviewed his memoir.

If it's the only memoir you've read, its believable and entertaining. If, like me, you read it after reading around a hundred other memoirs, its easy to spot he's a fraud. And I do mean fraud. It being a Confederate memoir makes his fraud easier to spot.

Also as I recollect, someone did some digging and found that not only was he not a private, but a Lieutenant, and he was listed as a deserter before even Franklin. Something along those lines.

I'm not out for fights, there's a lot of folks here who will defend him till their blue in the face, even throwing out stories of when he was writing crying it to prove their beliefs, but at the end of the day facts don't matter a bit to anyone. People beleive the "truths" they want to believe, and I can't say I'm willing to waste my time in fights over Watkins anymore.

I don't know where you got that information from but Watkins was never an officer nor do his military records say anything about him being a deserter.
In fact they don't even have cards for October-November of 1864.

 

[jackt62]

If it's the only memoir you've read, its believable and entertaining. If, like me, you read it after reading around a hundred other memoirs, its easy to spot he's a fraud. And I do mean fraud. It being a Confederate memoir makes his fraud easier to spot.

Yeah, Watkins seems to have been everywhere in the west and his recollections after so many years are almost too detailed to accept at face value. But it is entertaining.

 

[C. Cash]

I have to respectfully disagree with many of the above comments. Here is a somewhat recent discussion we had on this very topic. Not one of Watkins fellow Infantrymen, that I am aware of, ever called him on any lie. This is very important if you read the published narratives and responses of the soldiers who were there. Invariably, liars get called out in those same publications. Soldiers detest liars who steal valor. There were dozens if not hundreds who were with him and could have called him out and not one that I am aware of made that charge. The absence of corroborating info on certain topics is just that, until solid evidence is provided to prove or refute. Company Aytch remains a masterpiece and has much useful information for the historian. https://civilwartalk.com/threads/franklin-the-case-against-or-for-sam-watkins-narrative.195643/

 

[Johnny_Reb_1865]

Yeah, Watkins seems to have been everywhere in the west and his recollections after so many years are almost too detailed to accept at face value. But it is entertaining.

And yet not one of his comrades ever said he was a liar and the details he gives are things only a person who was actually there would've known. At first I didn't understand why all the skepticism when everything can be easily verifiable by accounts of other veterans of the same things but now I understand why it is.

It's because Samuel R. Watkins was a Confederate soldier.

 

[Philip Leigh]

Good insight above. I'd recommend the following:

Confederate Scout-Sniper, Berry Benson's account of his experience in the 1st South Carolina Infantry. He was everywhere and managed to escape from both Pt. Lookout Prison in Maryland and Camp Elmira in New York. The book was written by his daughter-in- law as a sort of oral history when he was on his death bed. No historian I know of has ever punched a hole in the facts as presented.

Although Benson's book is known by at least two different titles, I put it on a par with the Watkins memoir. Co. Aytch (Company H) has the edge in humor whereas Benson shows little tendency to exaggerate. Both men tell tales of stunning adventure and endurance.

The link below provides a review of of Benson's book.

Member Review - Berry Benson's Civil War Book: Memoirs of a Confederate Scout and Sharpshooter | Civil War Books, Stories, & Media

Edited by Susan W. Benson Introduction by Edward J. Cashin Copyright Date: 1991 Published by: Georgia University Press Pages: 288 Together with his sixteen-year-old brother, Blackford, Berry Benson (1843-1923) enlisted in a South Carolina regiment three months before Fort Sumter when he was...

civilwartalk.com

 

[Lost Cause]

I laugh when people cite him as a source for Joseph Johnston being a great general, while in the same memoir, Watkins also claims that Leonidas Polk, too, was a great general.

Watkins was a self-proclaimed story teller from a common soldier, whereas his writings should not be used as a historical source. In comparison of generals he served under, Johnston would rate higher than Bragg or Hood.