And this thread fired up again. Whew, when I start a fire, I start a fire!
Just as we must take in the bias of Watkins, there is also the bias of historians we must beware of. The current political trend to cancel and criminalize these men as a group has no doubt influenced how we view Watkins and others. I've noted a common trend to automatically distrust Southern sources with no real solid evidence to support the decision. With the lack of evidence either way they tend to go immediately to distrust, with no great desire to look into the matter in great detail. For example, Watkins info regarding Pickett's Mill sat there for over 150 years with no real historical investigation as to whether what he was saying was true. When pressed on the latter battle Historians revert to the old "you can't trust what he has to say" routine. Even when what he has to say, down to the minute details, is corroborated by literally dozens of narratives (including 2 extensive same day diary entries). Still, his info sits there as mere "smoke" and all these accounts, saying the same thing, are ignored. So, we have bias that we need to consider on all sides here. Historians need to put them aside and get back to critically looking at these accounts and determing what really is and isnt, rather than rely on feelings. It's too easy and convenient to say it's just a fireside tale or to even say he's prone to lie, and attempt to move on.
I've kind of taken some serious offense at this comment. Wasn't directed at me, but I started the thread with the book review, and your crusading for Watkins.
I've read your comments, and all the others since this started back up, and you've made some good points as well as some not as good. With me, and a great many people who criticized Sam Watkins, anti-Southern sympathies ain't got a thing to do with it. Plus, I'm extremely pro-Confederacy!
I've read at least 100 Confederate memoirs by enlisted men, most likely even more, and Sam Watkins book stinks to high Heaven. Most memoirs by enlisted men can be backed up by history books, follow a pattern based on what the writer saw when he saw it from a first-person point of view. Watkins book has too many suspicious aspects, and to me he comes across as someone who was pretending to be someone he was not and was spinning some yarns.
His work is not a grand example of the war from a Confederate soldier's point of view, its a derogatory one. It's like he's the stereotypical Southern hick telling a story, and compared to all the other Confederate memoirs I've read, more than a few unpublished rotting in local archives, its an insult. His work reminds me too much of memoirs by officers North and South trying to add glory to their well known names, except he's pretending be a hick. And the fact so many look to this probable fraud of a book as the shining example of the Southern enlisted man sickens me. He may have intended it as a grand secret gesture to the fighting man, but its insulting, and the fighting man spoke up pretty darn well on their own.
Sure, his daughter may have said she seen him weeping as he wrote, but for example, my Grandaddy swore up and down till the day he died his Mother was an angel, and as I learned from my Grandmother who was there, she was more of a cruel devil that would do anything dirty trick she could to get what she wanted. There's so many explanations for everything, but I rest my case once again, not that it'll matter. Arguing with closed doors doesn't accomplish anything. Which to be fair is a double edged sword...