A Soldier Author

Andrew Fuller Sperry enlisted with no hoopla in the 33^rd Iowa Volunteer Infantry on 5 August 1862. He was 23 years old and about to embark on an adventure that would carry him through the battle of Helena, the Little Rock campaign, the Camden campaign, and fighting in the closing stages of the war near Mobile, Alabama. He ended the war along the Texas coast, a place he commented on in unfavorable language. Remarkably, his History Of The 33d Iowa Infantry Volunteer Regiment, 1863-66 was published only one year after the war ended making it one of the earliest of regimental histories. As a side note, the 33^rd Iowa did not muster out until August 1865, and Sperry’s book appeared in print a mere eight months later. If books truly reflect an author’s personality, then I would say that Sperry was a direct, honest, and unpretentious man. His book is straightforward and easy to read with none of the flowery language that characterizes some books written by Civil War veterans. His focus is on his regiment, but he was intellectually curious enough to include his impressions of the people and regions where he campaigned. The best edition of the book is the one edited by Gregory J. W. Urwin and Cathy Kunzinger Urwin and published in 1999 by the University of Arkansas Press. There is much of interest in this book plus it’s a fun read!

An Iowan Discusses Marching

Currently, I am reading Andrew F. Sperry’s, History of The 33d Iowa Infantry Volunteer Regiment, 1863-6 (1866; reprint ed., Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 1999). The 33^rd Iowa spent much of the war campaigning in the trans-Mississippi, and I am finding Sperry’s book to be accurate as well as entertaining. Since I have written several postings about marches in the trans-Mississippi, I found the following passage that chronicles one of the regiment’s marches during the Little Rock campaign in August 1863 to be interesting. I have italicized the portion that I found to be of most interest.

“The heat and the hard marching together, were too much for any ordinary powers of endurance. Men would fall out of the ranks and tumble down at the side of the road, by dozens and almost by hundreds. All such stragglers would have to come on after us, of course; but that is much easier than marching in ranks. In fact, marching with a regiment is one of the hardest ways in the world of getting along. A man may walk forty miles a day, alone and at his own gait and time, as easily as he can march twenty-five miles a day in the army. And a sick man, who can not march fast enough to keep up with the regiment, is frequently permitted to walk on ahead. This may be called a peripatetic paradox—that a soldier who can not march fast enough to keep up with his regiment, should rest himself by marching on ahead of it, yet such is often the case” (p. 46).