On April 26, 1865, on a farm just outside Durham, North Carolina,
General Joseph E. Johnston surrendered the remnants of the Army of
Tennessee to his longtime foe, General William T. Sherman.
Johnston's surrender ended the unrelenting Federal drive through
the Carolinas and dashed any hope for Southern independence. Among
the thirty thousand or so ragged Confederates who soon received
their paroles were seventy-eight men from the Nineteenth Tennessee
Volunteer Infantry Regiment. Originally consisting of over one
thousand men, the unit had--through four years of sickness, injury,
desertion, and death--been reduced to a tiny fraction of its former
strength.
Organized from volunteer companies from the upper and lower
portions of East Tennessee, the men of the Nineteenth represented
an anomaly--Confederates in the midst of the largest Unionist
stronghold of the South. Why these East Tennesseans chose to defy
their neighbors, risking their lives and fortunes in pursuit of
Southern independence, lacks a simple answer. John D. Fowler finds
that a significant number of the Nineteenth's members belonged to
their region's local elite--old, established families engaged in
commercial farming or professional occupations. The influence of
this elite, along with community pressure, kinship ties, fear of
invasion, and a desire to protect republican liberty, generated
Confederate sympathy amongst East Tennessee secessionists,
including the members of the Nineteenth.
Utilizing an exhaustive exploration of primary source materials,
the author creates a new model for future regimental histories--a
model that goes beyond "bugles and bullets" to probe the
motivations for enlistment, the socioeconomic backgrounds, the
wartime experiences, and the postwar world of these unique
Confederates. The Nineteenth served from the beginning of the
conflict to its conclusion, marching and fighting in every major
engagement of the Army of Tennessee except Perryville. Fowler uses
this extensive service to explore the soldiers' effectiveness as
fighting men, the thrill and fear of combat, the harsh and often
appalling conditions of camp life, the relentless attrition through
disease, desertion, and death in battle, and the specter of defeat
that haunted the Confederate forces in the West. This study also
provides insight into the larger issues of Confederate leadership,
strategy and tactics, medical care, prison life, the erosion of
Confederate morale, and Southern class relations. The resulting
picture of the war is gritty, real, and all too personal. If the
Civil War is indeed a mosaic of "little wars," this, then, is the
Nineteenth's war.
John D. Fowler is assistant professor of history at Kennesaw State
University. He is the recipient of the Mrs. Simon Baruch University
Award for the best manuscript in Civil War History (2002).
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