100 Books Like Out of the Briars

Early in the war, writer Louisa May Alcott journeyed to the nation’s capital to care for sick and wounded soldiers. Over a period of six weeks, she experienced firsthand the rigors of life in crowded hospital wards as a nurse to men suffering from disease and wounds. She recorded her observations in a series of accounts printed in a Boston newspaper. These writings formed the basis of Hospital Sketches. Published a month after the end of the Battle of Gettysburg, when the outcome of the war remained uncertain, Alcott’s words encouraged other women to support the U.S. war effort, and remind us today of the critical role of nurses in times of conflict.

Hailed by historians as one of the most important memoirs authored by a Civil War veteran, Hard Tack and Coffee tells the story of army life. John D. Billings traces the trail of the citizen soldier from recruitment and enlistment to the trials and tribulations of camp and campaign. Written more than two decades after the end of the conflict, Billings reflects on those tumultuous times with humor as he and his comrades stumbled their way through the varied lessons of the art of war. After he mustered out of a Massachusetts artillery regiment in 1865, Billings went on to become a respected educator.

The bonds of comradeship formed by volunteer soldiers during the Civil War lasted a lifetime for those who survived its bloody campaigns. Most regiments held annual reunions, during which the veterans rekindled friendships and remembered their service. Many collected reminiscences in book form, and these regimental histories are treasure troves of personal accounts. One of the most outstanding of this genre is the History of the Twelfth Regiment, a narrative of the men and officers who served in the 12th New Hampshire Infantry. Author Asa Bartlett, a beloved officer, humanizes the service of these Granite State volunteers.

Battle-hardened and wounded veteran Ambrose Bierce recounted his army experiences in a series of grim short stories that reveal the horrors of the Civil War. In graphic detail, he paints a disturbing and twisted picture of the conflict. His writings stand in stark contrast to reminiscences by other veterans in the twilight of life who reflected on their participation in the battles and campaigns with pride and esprit de corps. A collection of these fictional writings by “Bitter Bierce” first published as Tales of Soldiers and Civilians explores the dark side of the Civil War—and human nature—with a unique brand of wit and satire.

After disguising herself as a man, Ash Thompson dons the uniform of a Union soldier in the Civil War. She is an enthralling character and not only did I avidly follow Ash to the front lines, this fine novel gave me the courage to move ahead with my work.

I decided my major character, Rory Chase, would be a woman caught up in the intrigue and espionage along our border with British Canada in 1864. Time and again, I said to myself, if Hunt can pull this off with his heroine, I believe I can do the same with Rory.

That I, too, can write about a woman who must learn the rules of warfare and espionage and then decide when to break them. 

More than 170,000 African Americans served in the Union Army and navy during the Civil War. From 1863 on, they performed heroically on many battlefields, most famously at the assault on Fort Wagner in Charleston Harbor, as dramatically depicted in the film “Glory.” Much less well-known was the deliberate slaughter of nearly two hundred black federal troops at Fort Pillow, Tennessee in 1864, by Confederate forces led by Nathan Bedford Forrest, a prewar slaver trader and a postwar leader of the Ku Klux Klan. It was the worst wartime atrocity committed on U.S. soil outside the Indian wars. What happened at Fort Pillow demonstrated the additional risk that every black soldier in blue faced: not just injury, but murder or reenslavement by the enemy. Ward’s account moves at a pounding pace. More than the account of a single battle, it places the role of black troops in the larger context… show more.

Historian Mark M. Smith is one of the pioneers of the truly exciting field of sensory history. Smith’s book is a model for how the next generations of historians can expand our understanding of the power and spectacle of war through a focus on all the senses. Smith’s chapters pick a particular sense at a particular Civil War site—my favorite is “Cornelia Hancock’s Sense of Smell,” which helps us appreciate how the assaults of transgressive smells lasted far beyond the three days of combat at Gettysburg.  Each chapter is carefully crafted to illustrate how an assault of the senses threatened the stability of what registered as “civilization” for the Civil War generation. After reading several of Smith’s books, I found myself much more attentive to the sensory dimension of any historical experience. Early in my tenure as editor of the Journal Of American History, I asked Smith to be… show more.

I like this book because it is an outstanding collection of images and biographical information about real boys who served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. 

I wanted to learn their stories so I could share them with others, in particular, my students–to teach them history through the lives of their peers. I found Keesee’s research extraordinary, a fascinating dive into the lives of real boys who were a part of America’s history yet are generally forgotten today. 

As a retired teacher, I continue to share what I’ve learned through my writings and presentations to library patrons and civic and historical organizations.

Several of the seven former slaves brought to life in Richard Blackett’s classic work pursued trans-Atlantic reform long before American disunion. Nothing like this book has appeared since its publication, and so I find myself poking around, always with great pleasure, in the taut, dramatic stories of Black émigrés like J. Sella Martin, William and Ellen Craft, and William Howard Day. Their vivid lives demonstrate the unique value of stories told by those with first-hand experience of Southern slavery.

The polished biographies pair these freed people’s quest to impugn the Confederacy with other commitments and takes pains to place interest in America alongside a concern for Africa, the Caribbean, and for a Europe yet to provide color-blind justice for all.

I loved how this book blended the experience of Cadet William Hugh McDowell, a cadet from the Virginia Military Institute who fought in the Battle of New Market during the Civil War, with fictional modern-day Benjy, a 20th-century boy who is visiting his grandmother in New Market during his summer vacation. This book blends Benjy’s fictional story with Hugh’s historic and nonfiction life experience.

As a teaching tool, I was able to clarify the difference between fact and fiction for my students in our study of the Civil War. I was later amazed to learn that an element of the story that Elaine had created to tie the two boys together turned out to really exist–the boy’s watch.