As If It Were Glory

Michael E. Stevens is state historic preservation officer at the Wisconsin Historical Society. He has written and edited several books on common men and women during war including: Letters From the Front, 1898–1945, Women Remember the War, 1941–1945, Remembering the Holocaust, and Voices from Vietnam.

• ForewordIntroductionChapter 1: "As if it were glory and not years of bitter war": Bull Run and a Winter of Idleness: May 1861–April 1862Chapter 2: "I was pretty sick": Surviving the Military Hospitals: April 1862–December 1862Chapter 3: "A campaign of adventure": From the Mud March to Chancellorsville: January 1863–June 1863Chapter 4: "We were all boys then": The First Day at Gettysburg: July 1, 1863Chapter 5: "The living prepared for the morrow": The Second Day at Gettysburg: July 2, 1863Chapter 6: "Into the fiercest hell of battle": The Third Day at Gettysburg: July 3, 1863Chapter 7: "The scenes I witnessed there": Life in a Southern Prison Camp: July–August 1863Chapter 8: "My first promotion": Becoming an Officer with the U.S. Colored Troops: August–December 1863Chapter 9: "Soldiers till the last man falls": With the Twenty-third U.S. Colored Troops: January–June 1864Chapter 10: "We'll show the world today that colored troops are soldiers": The Battle of the Crater: June–July 1864Chapter 11: "We were a sorry-looking set": Prisoner of War Again: July 1864–March 1865Chapter 12: "The paths and the vocations of peace": March–June 1865

An exceptional memoir by an unusually idealistic and sophisticated Iron Brigade soldier who fought from Bull Run to Gettysburg and who finished the war as an officer in a Black regiment. Beecham understood the war in terms of freedom and rejected the racist and counterfactual postwar myth of the Lost Cause. Highly recommended.