A Diary of Battle: The Personal Journals of Colonel Charles S. Wainwright, 1861-1865 (review)

Abstract

A Diary of Battle: The Personal Journals of Colonel Charles S. Wainwright , 1861-1865. Edited by AUan Nevins. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1962. Pp. xvin, 549. $8.75.) When a great historian who is such a prodigious researcher as Allan Nevins declares categoricaUy that this is "the most comprehensive and historicaUy useful field diary by a Civil War officer that I have seen," it's like seeing "sterling" on süver, "14 karat" on gold. You know this is the genuine valuable article. In October, 1861, Charles Wainwright, member of a prosperous Empire State famüy, was commissioned a major in the 1st New York Artillery, eventually attaining the rank of brevet brigadier general, a feat which took some doing in a branch of service usuaUy treated like a loved but idiot stepchild. He fought through the Peninsular Campaign, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsv üle, Gettysburg, the Wüderness, Cold Harbor, Spottsylvania, and Petersburg , and was there when Lee's Army of Northern Virginia gasped defiance with its last breath at Appomattox. He served as artillery chief of the First and Fifth Corps. EquaUy important for us, he kept voluminous journals from October 1, 1861, until the Grand Review, May 23-24, 1865. Wainwright jotted down notes when busy in the field, sometimes in the heat of battle, and wrote his remarkable record in detaü as soon as leisure aUowed— frequently, when the guns had scarcely cooled. This is indeed a battle diary. Wainwright's journals were rescued from obscurity by Dr. Nevins, who purchased them from a grand-nephew of the general, found a publisher, and has since donated the originals to the Henry E. Huntington Library. The more than 500,000 words Wainwright recorded have been pruned and otherwise edited and annotated by Nevins, and provided with a connective narrative. The specialist wiU find A Diary of Battle riveting his attention almost immediately as Wainwright discourses on tactics, ordnance, the training of raw troops, and the gradual unfolding of his staunch, although unsuccessful, campaign for more autonomy for the artiUery. The general reader wül gradually become locked into the journals with Wainwright the man, sharing his experiences, emotions, and thought processes, although not necessarily finding his point of view palatable. (A conservative Democrat, he states that "When calm history comes to be written, Mr. Lincoln must appear as one of the smaUest of men, always harping on trifles.") This opinionated Hudson River VaUey aristocrat emerges as someone very much alive; flesh and blood manifest themselves through a transparency of print. This is indeed a very human document, set down in the midst of a national paroxysm, shock waves from which we yet feel, enigmas of which still hold so many of us in thraU. The diary does not seem part of a dead past. It has a life of its own, and as we read it Wainwright is with us here and now. Mort R. Lewis Los Angeles 334 ...