With the Wandering Regiment: The Diary of Captain Ralph Ely of the Eighth Michigan Infantry , and: Back Home in Oneida: Hermon Clarke and His Letters , and: Dear Belle: Letters from a Cadet & Officer to His Sweetheart, 1858-1865 (review)

Abstract

308CIVIL WAB HISTOBT seaports. In all of these ports but Galveston, torpedoes were an important part of the defense. The bibliography is adequate but not exhaustive. One wishes that a more diligent search had been made of available manuscript sources. For example, Mr. Perry cites Record Group 109 (War Department Collection of Confederate Records) in the National Archives, but he apparently failed to find or use a very lengthy (over sixty pages) document written by Francis Lee concerning his activities in building torpedo boats. The diary of General George A. Mercer (Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina) sheds some light on the origin of spar torpedoes. The illustrations are excellent particularly the photos taken of various torpedoes in the collection of the West Point Museum. An appendix on Union vessels sunk or damaged by mines is also included. Wtlliam N. Stell, Jr. Mississippi State College for Women With the Wandering Regiment: The Diary of Captain Ralph Ely of the Eighth Michigan Infantry. Edited by George M. Blackburn. (Mount Pleasant: Central Michigan University Press, 1965. Pp. 73.) Back Home in Oneida: Herman Clarke and His Letters. By Harry F. Jackson and Thomas F. OOonnelL (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1965. Pp. ix, 212. $6.00.) Dear Belle: Letters from a Cadet 6- Officer to His Sweetheart, 18581865 . Edited by Catherine S. Crary. (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1965. Pp. xviii, 256. $5.95.) One of the principal dividends of the now-concluded Civil War Centennial was the discovery of a number of unpublished soldiers' reminiscences. Some of the collections unearthed and printed—such as the journals of Colonel Charles S. Wainwright and the letters of General Robert McAllister-wüI stand as reference works for years to come. Others are but pleasant footnotes to the saga of Civil War GI's. These three works under review belong to the latter class. Ralph Ely was a farmer residing near Alma, Michigan, at war's outset In May, 1861, he joined the 8th Michigan Infantry as a captain; he eventually attained the rank of brigadier general Ely's first service was with Thomas W. Sherman's expedition in South Carolina. The farmer-turned-soldier next joined the newly formed Ninth Corps and fought with Bumside at Antietam , Knoxville, and in the final campaigns for Richmond. Unfortunately, the diary inexplicably ends with an April 1, 1864, entry. For the most part, Ely's journal of military service consists of short daily notations that tend to be meaningless and too often are monotonous. Typical of such entries is that for November 15, 1861: "Company on guard at the Fort I remained BOOKREVIEWS309 at camp writing home." Even Ely's summary of Antietam runs to but nine hues. The letters are well-edited, and the annotation is exceptionally good; but the lack of an index seriously restricts the usefulness of a diary that is more a brief travelogue than an incisive commentary on war. Back Home in Oneida is a narrative history based on the seventy-two letters of Hermon Clarke, a central New York farmer who managed to avoid the magnetisms of war for a year. Then, in August 1862, the twenty-fouryear -old Clarke left his region for the first time and journeyed southward with the 117th New York Infantry. After initial duty in the Washington defenses, the regiment participated in the Suffolk, Fort Wagner, Bermuda Hundred, and Petersburg campaigns. Clarke's letters to his family are highly observant treatises on officers, movements, country scenes and people. Of General B. F. ("Beast") Butler, for example, Clarke wrote: "Butler may be a very smart man in some things, but if I have got to fight I want to do it under a man that knows more about war than he does." A basic weakness in this work is its format Authors Jackson and ????nell contributed as much—if not more—text than did Clarke. The book seems undeservedly padded. Needed annotation for many points in Clarke's letters is missing. The publisher also contributed to the shortcomings by omitting an index. In short, Back Home in Oneida may make a good volume for popular consumption, but it lacks the makeup to be a...