Overview

As a war correspondent, Wilbur Fisk was an amateur, yet his letters to the Montpelier """"Green Mountain Freeman"""" comprise one of the finest collections of Civil War letters in existence. But Fisk was no novelist. He was a rural school teacher from Vermont, primarily self-educated, who enlisted in the Union Army simply because he believed he would regret it later if he didn't. Between December 11, 1861, and July 26, 1865, Fisk wrote nearly 100 letters from the battlefield. At the beginning of the war he was exuberant and eager for contact with the enemy. Two years later, Fisk was disillusioned and war weary: """"The rebel dead and ours lay thickly together, their thirst for blood forever quenched. Their bodies were swollen, black and hideously unnatural. Their eyes glared from their sockets, their tongues protruded from their mouths, and in almost every case, clots of blood and mangled flesh showed how they had died, and rendered a sight ghastly beyond description. I though I had become hardened to almost anything, but I cannot say I ever wish to see another sight like that I saw on the battle-field of Gettysburg"""". Unlike professional war correspondents, Private Fisk had no access to rank or headquarters. Instead, he wrote of life as a private - as one of the foot soldiers who slept in the mud and obeyed orders no matter how incomprehensible.

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One of the finest records I know of what it was like to fight and win the Civil War. --Geoffrey C. Ward, coauthor of the PBS documentary The Civil War and author of the companion volume, The Civil War: An Illustrated History

-One of the finest records I know of what it was like to fight and win the Civil War.---Geoffrey C. Ward, coauthor of the PBS documentary The Civil War and author of the companion volume, The Civil War: An Illustrated History

One of the finest records I know of what it was like to fight and win the Civil War. --Geoffrey C. Ward, coauthor of the PBS documentary The Civil War and author of the companion volume, The Civil War: An Illustrated History Fisk's letters are marvelous. It is almost unbelievable, they are such literary gems. In fact, they are so good that the thought occurred to me that perhaps they are not authentic. It would be believable that some expert novelist had created them! --Herman Hattaway, coauthor of How the North Won the Civil War and Why the South Lost the Civil War This is one of the richest collections of Civil War letters I have seen. I doubt if I have seen any collection that surpasses it. Fisk is intelligent and thoughtful. He writes well and the prose is still accessible to a late twentieth-century reader. He successfully presents the minutiae of soldier life-marching, food, picketing, pay, battles-while also explicating the issues behind the war. --Reid Mitchell, author of Civil War Soldiers: Their Expectations and Experiences An important combat chronology of the war from the infantry private's viewpoint. --James McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom For sheer description, these letters are unsurpassed. --Civil War History An unmatched record of the common Union soldier's life. --Washington Post Book World A marvelous account of the Civil War, equal or superior to any produced by the common soldier, North or South. --Philadelphia Inquirer Of the publishing of Civil War letters and memoirs there is no end, but Private Fisk's Civil War has all the earmarks of a classic. --Journal of American History One of the richest sources on Civil War soldiering in print. An exciting, readable book. --Atlanta History These letters are remarkably astute, exceedingly detailed, and often brutally honest. --Blue & Gray Magazine Fisk, shrewd and humorous, combining idealism and patriotism with a healthy dose of common sense, deserves to stand beside Elisha Hunt Rhodes as an archetypical soldier of the Army of the Potomac. --Publishers Weekly The letters contain descriptions of conditions in camp, on the march, and in hospitals; comments on battles, officers, and army morale; reactions to places seen and executions of deserters, as well as Fisk's political views and military frustrations. --Choice The Fisk letters are superb. They are extremely well written and they convey a magnificent picture of the life of a Federal soldier in the Army of the Potomac. --Civil War Book Exchange

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