Beschreibung:

24 items. At its very foundations, the Civil War army was a massive bureaucracy, run on paper as much as ammunition. Each company in each regiment, each brigade, and each division kept records of their soldiers and activities, and like these records from Company E, 97th Ohio Infantry paint a sometimes intimate record of service in wartime. The 97th was organized at Zanesville in the late summer 1862, recruited primarily from the towns of Muskingum, Morgan, Guernsey, and Coshocton. Rushed into the field in Covington, Ky., the regiment served primarily with the Army of the Cumberland, taking part in numerous engagements, large and small, including the Pursuit of Bragg, Stones River, the Middle Tennessee Campaign, the Chattanooga Campaign, Missionary Ridge, the Atlanta Campaign (Rocky Face Ridge, Buzzard’s Roost, Dalton, Resaca, Pumpkin Vine Creek, Marietta and Kennesaw Mountain, Peach Tree Creek, Atlanta, Jonesboro), Franklin, and Nashville. They suffered accordingly. Upon mustering out in June 1865, the regimental records showed the loss of 93 men in combat and 161 by disease and accident. This swath of the official trail left by one company of the 97th Ohio is not extensive, but in its bureaucratic way, it provides a cross-sectional perspective on what it was like to serve in a western regiment. Among the 24 documents in the collection are nine descriptive lists, providing details on individual soldiers that are difficult to glean from soldiers’ letters and other documents, including height, eye and hair color, complexion, age, place of origin, and the sorts of clothing charged to them. From these records, we learn of that the regiment included a 5’4” immigrant shoemaker German, a 37 year old Virginian (from Farquhar County) who enlisted at Zanesville, and a soldier who was captured at Coral Hill, Ky., in Nov. 1862. Equally interesting are the nine monthly returns for Co. E, reported from Feb. 1863 and July 1863-Feb. 1864, listing sick and wounded (and quite a total at that): an impressive (in a sad way) Feb. 1863 return listing 39 soldiers sent to hospital or (in case of four) discharged for Pioneer work, in Nov. and Dec., 1862, from Co. E in, a list so long it required Capt. Egans to affix an extra sheet of paper on the bottom of the form. On verso lists two more men died of diarrhea and three discharged for physical disability; Jan. 1863 return lists only 12 sick; return of Capt. George Hull (Co. E) listing sick and wounded, including six men wounded and three killed in action at Mission Ridge, Nov. 1863. Adding to the mix is a handful of more unusual documents, such as a very rare voucher for expenses filed by Lieut. George K. Taylor (Co. B) for his Negro servant (James Smiles), Dec. 1862, and a handwritten copy of General Orders 60, July 25, 1863. Issued by Brig. Gen. Wood, the order was read to each company regarding the publication of Maj. Gen. Daniel Butterfield’s new manual on camp and outpost duty for infantry, and requiring them to adopt the regulations wholeheartedly: It is only by having better armies than the rebels that we can reasonably hope to suppress the rebellion, restore the union and reassert the permanent authority of the constitution of the United States. We all desire this great result. Let us spare no means obtaining it. Condition: A fine collection in good overall condition, displaying some expected wear, soiling, and signs of age.