Regimental histories are
one of my favorite genres, but until the advent of the digital age, it was
difficult to locate veteran written histories. When I was in graduate school
most of these had to be obtained via interlibrary loan, but many of them have
been digitized and are available online. The Internet Archive has a variety of
materials available for free including a wide range of veteran penned
regimental histories. A quick search yielded the following histories of units that
served in the trans-Mississippi:
Barney, Chester. Recollections Of Field Service With The
Twentieth Iowa Infantry Volunteers (1865)
Beecher, Harris H. Record Of The 114th Regiment, N.
Y. S. V. (1866)
Ewer, James K. The Third Massachusetts Cavalry In The War
For The Union (1903)
Lathrop, David. History Of The Fifty-Ninth Regiment,
Illinois Volunteer Infantry (1865)
Scott, John. Story Of The Thirty-Second Iowa Infantry
Volunteers (1896)
Sprague, Homer B. History Of The 13th Infantry
Regiment Of Connecticut Volunteers (1867)
By no means did I conduct
a thorough search, so other regimentals, published diaries, memoirs, etc. await
the curious.
Well, thank goodness that Scott's Story of the Thirty-Second Iowa is finally available for perusal. I spent years trying to get hold of a copy of that book, and only recently found one on the shelves at Tulane, which I was able to Xerox on their machine before telling the librarian that they really needed to put that thing under lock and key. Good to see that these books are becoming more available.
ReplyDeleteLike you, I am extremely pleased that the Scott book is available in a digital format. Many years ago when I was in graduate school, my university's library borrowed a copy for me via interlibrary loan--have no recollection of which library was willing to loan it, but it was much appreciated. With time, more and more of these rarities will be available digitally. Hurrah!
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