Best us civil war regimental history books according to redditors
We found 8 Reddit comments discussing the best us civil war regimental history books. We ranked the 7 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
"A Little Fifer's War Diary" is pretty great: https://archive.org/details/littlefiferswar00bardrich Regimental histories can be wonderful sources regarding the common soldier's experiences as well. John J. Pullen's "The 20th Maine" is one that immediately springs to mind: https://www.amazon.com/Twentieth-Maine-Chamberlain-Volunteer-Regiment/dp/0811735249. But if you have a particular unit in mind for your character, definitely look up any relevant regimental histories that might be available.
California was busy fighting both Mexico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Bautista_Alvarado and United States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_San_Pasqual
California has it's own forces that exist to today; it evolved out of the Californio lancers then formed the U.S. California Battalion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_California_Cavalry_Battalion also https://www.amazon.com/Californio-Lancers-Battalion-Frontier-Military/dp/0870624369 and evolved and continue today as guard units
If he is interested in Civil War history specific to New Hampshire I highly recommend the following titles:
https://www.amazon.com/My-Brave-Boys-Colonel-Fighting/dp/1584650753
https://www.amazon.com/Our-War-Mike-Pride/dp/0981821529/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1499818812&sr=1-1&keywords=mike+pride+civil+war
https://www.amazon.com/Men-Granite-Duane-E-Shaffer/dp/1611170125/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1499818850&sr=1-3&keywords=men+of+granite
https://www.amazon.com/Twentieth-Maine-Chamberlain-Volunteer-Regiment/dp/0811735249
I wrote a paper for my undergrad Civil War history course, using that collection. I got the book from my university library. Here is an amazon link to it:
http://www.amazon.com/Civil-letters-George-Washington-Whitman/dp/0822303310
I'd definitely recommend this book on the 11th Virginia Cavalry which is part of the Virginia Regimental Histories series. My 2nd-great grandfather was in the 3rd Virginia Cavalry and the book on that by Thomas P. Nanzig as part of the series gave an incredible amount of detail and was everything I was looking for. I can pretty much say now exactly where the regiment was and what they were doing on every day of the war. The series is expensive because I think they only printed in 1,000 copies each (the one I have is marked 760 of 1,000 and signed by the author) but I don't think you'll be disappointed. It will be an heirloom.
Another way to find out more about how he was captured is if you know the exact date then look it up in a book like The Civil War Day by Day: An Almanac, 1861-1865 and if you know the general location it should be pretty easy to tell. I had to do this for another of my 2nd-great grandfathers who was in the Alabama cavalry which isn't as well documented as the Virginia cavalry so there is no in-depth regimental history devoted to it, but I knew about where he was and the date so I was able to figure it out.
Not really but I'm really interested in it, both in the military side of it (battles etc) but also the impact that it had on society. Civil Wars have the added horror of society fighting itself.
I have a colleague in the USA who had a Colonel in the Civil War and he sent me a book written about the unit he commanded that I'm reading at the moment. Very interesting and the bad feeling persists to this day.