History of Kershaw's Brigade / With Complete Roll of Companies, Biographical Sketches, Incidents, Anecdotes, etc.
The Project Gutenberg eBook, History of Kershaw's Brigade, by D. Augustus Dickert
For three reasons, one purely personal (as you will soon see), I am pleased to play even a small part in the reprinting of D. Augustus Dickert's The History of Kershaw's Brigade ... an undertaking in my judgment long, long, overdue.
First , it is a very rare and valuable book. Privately published by Dickert's friend and neighbor, Elbert H. Aull, owner-editor of the small-town weekly Newberry (S.C.) Herald and News , almost all of the copies were shortly after water-logged in storage and destroyed. Meantime, only a few copies had been distributed, mostly to veterans and to libraries within the state. Small wonder, then, that Kershaw's Brigade ... so long out-of-print, is among the scarcest of Confederate War books—a point underscored by the fact that no copy has been listed in American Book Prices Current in fifty years. Only one sale of the book is recorded in John Mebane's Books Relating to the Civil War (1963), an ex-library copy which sold for $150. More recently, another copy, oddly described as library indicia, extremely rare , was offered for sale by second-hand dealer for $200. Under these circumstances it is difficult to determine why, amidst the ever-increasing interest in the irrepressible conflict, this unique book has had to wait seventy-five years to make its reappearance on the American historical scene.
But Kershaw's Brigade ... is much more than a recounting of military movements and the ordeals of battles. It is at once a panorama of the agonies and the ecstacies of cold-steel war. Few such narratives are so replete with quiet, meditative asides, bold delineations of daily life in camp and on the march, descriptions of places and peoples, and—by no means least—the raucous, all relieving humor of the common soldier who resolutely makes merry to-day because to-morrow he may die. Thus, to young Dickert did the routine of the military become alternately matters grave or gay. Everything was grist for his mill: the sight of a pretty girl waving at his passing troop train, the roasting of a stolen pig over a campfire, the joy of finding a keg of red-eye which had somehow fallen—no one knew how—from a supply wagon; or, on another and quite different day, the saddening afterthoughts of a letter from home, the stink of bloated, rotting horses, their stiffened legs pointed skyward, the acrid taste of gun-powder smoke, the frightening whine (or thud) of an unseen sharpshooter's bullet, and the twisted, shoeless, hatless body of yesterday's friend or foe.
D. A. Dickert
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HISTORY OF KERSHAW'S BRIGADE,
WITH COMPLETE ROLL OF COMPANIES, BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES, INCIDENTS, ANECDOTES, ETC.
D. AUGUSTUS DICKERT.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION.
INTRODUCTION.
History of Kershaw's Brigade. By D. Augustus Dickert. (9x5-3/4, pp. 583. Illus.) Elbert H. Aull Company, Newberry, S.C.
AUTHOR'S ANNOUNCEMENT.
CHAPTER I
SECESSION.
CHAPTER II
ENROLLMENT OF TROOPS.
CHAPTER III.
Reorganization or the Troops—Volunteers for Confederate Service—Call from Virginia. Troops Leave the State.
CHAPTER IV
Camp at Fairfax—Bonham's Staff—Biography of General Bonham—Retreat to Bull Run. Battle of the 18th.
CHAPTER V
The Battle of Manassas—Rout of the Enemy. Visit to the Battlefield.
Vienna—Flint Hill—Duel Sports—July to October.
CHAPTER VII
Winter Quarters at Bull Run.
CHAPTER VIII
Reorganized—"New Officers"—Battle.
CHAPTER IX
Battle of Seven Pines—Seven Days' Fight Around Richmond.
The March to Maryland—Second Manassas. Capture of Harper's Ferry—Sharpsburg.
CHAPTER XI
Sharpsburg or Antietam—Return to Virginia.
CHAPTER XII
From Winchester to Fredericksburg.
CHAPTER XIII
Battle of Fredericksburg—The Fifteenth Regiment and Third Battalion Join Brigade.
CHAPTER XIV
Incidents of the Battle—Comparisons With Other Engagements.
CHAPTER XV
Reminiscences.
CHAPTER XVI
Campaign of 1863—Battle of Chancellorsville.
CHAPTER XVII
From Chancellorsville to Gettysburg—Camp, March, and Battle.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Battle of Gettysburg—July 2d.
CHAPTER XIX.
Gettysburg Continued—Pickett's Charge.
CHAPTER XX.
Gettysburg—Fourth Day—Incidents of the Battle—Sketch of Dessausure, McLeod, and Salmonds.
CHAPTER XXI
Transferred to Georgia—Scenes Along the Route.
CHAPTER XXII
The Battle of Chickamauga.
CHAPTER XXIII
Notes of the Battle—Pathetic Scenes—Sketches of Officers.
CHAPTER XXIV
In Front of Chattanooga.
CHAPTER XXV
Around Knoxville—The Siege and Storming of Fort Sanders.
CHAPTER XXVI
The Siege of Knoxville Raised—Battle of Bean Station—Winter Quarters.
CHAPTER XXVII
In Winter Quarters, 1863 and 1864—Re-enlistment.
CHAPTER XXVIII
In Camp on the Holston, East Tennessee. Return to Virginia.
CHAPTER XXIX
Battle of the Wilderness.
CHAPTER XXX
Brock's Cross Road and Spottsylvania to North Anna.
CHAPTER XXXI
From North Anna to Cold Harbor—Joined by the Twentieth South Carolina.
CHAPTER XXXII
From Cold Harbor to Petersburg.
CHAPTER XXXIII
In the Trenches Around Petersburg.
CHAPTER XXXIV
Leaves the Trenches in the Shenandoah Valley.
CHAPTER XXXV
Reminiscences of the Valley.
CHAPTER XXXVI
Leaves the Valley—Return to Early—Second Valley Campaign.
CHAPTER XXXVII
Battle of Cedar Creek or Fisher's Hill, 19th October, 1864.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
Leave the Valley for the Last Time—October 20th to December 31st, 1864.
CHAPTER XXXIX
Peace Conference—State Troops—Women of the South.
CHAPTER XL
Opening of 1865—Gloomy Outlook—Prison Pens—Return to South Carolina of Kershaw's Brigade.
CHAPTER XLI
On the Saltkahatchie. February, 1865.
CHAPTER XLII
March Through South Carolina, February and March, 1865.
CHAPTER XLIII
From Smithfield to Greensboro—The Surrender.
CHAPTER XLIV
Retrospect.
APPENDIX
ROLL OF SECOND SOUTH CAROLINA VOLUNTEER REGIMENT.
ROLL OF THIRD SOUTH CAROLINA VOLUNTEER REGIMENT.
ROLL OF SEVENTH SOUTH CAROLINA VOLUNTEER REGIMENT.
ROLL OF EIGHTH SOUTH CAROLINA VOLUNTEER REGIMENT.
ROLL OF FIFTEENTH SOUTH CAROLINA VOLUNTEER REGIMENT.
ROLL OF THIRD BATTALION (JAMES).
ROLL OF TWENTIETH SOUTH CAROLINA VOLUNTEER REGIMENT.
INDEX.
ERRATA.