The Lincoln movie is getting high marks, as it opened in select theaters yesterday. Smithsonian magazine ran a good article about it this month titled Mr. Lincoln Goes to Hollywood.

And just in time for some Civil War history comes a work edited by DTS's own Dr. John Reed, co-edited with DTS grad and freelance writer, Craig Claybrook. The book: Triumph Amidst Bloodshed. It's an updated re-release of eyewitness accounts about hundreds of Union soldiers. Out of the Y.M.C.A. at the time arose the U. S. Christian Commission to care for soldiers throughout the war. Dr. Reed describes its work as the Y.M.C.A.'s finest hour. More than five thousand pastors and Christian laypeople volunteered. And at the conclusion of the conflict, they submitted about ten thousand short stories, of which more than five hundred were included in Incidents of the U.S. Christian Commission (1869). This recent work is an updated version of that compilation, providing a largely unknown but extraordinary collection of narratives.

Responsible for updating the language, Craig tells of how he changed numerous occurrences in which a man spoke of his “blouse that was in shreds." Today they would call it their uniform jacket. Claybrook also told of how men carried their housewives in their backpacks. In today's language, they meant they carried sewing kits.

When asked his favorite story, Dr. Reed told of one that meant a lot to him. It was recorded by the pastor to whom it happened and written in a time when men could volunteer to serve in place of others when drafted:

In answer to a letter from a soldier's family, I was searching for a grave in the Soldiers' Cemetery in Nashville when I noticed a man in civilian clothing kneeling by a grave. He was evidently writing on the painted headboard. When I went over to him, he was standing in front of the board, his arms folded, his face bathed in tears. He turned out to be an Illinois farmer and this was the gave of an Illinois soldier.

"Is that your boy, sir?" I asked.

"No, he lived in our town, and I've come to find his grave."

"Do you represent his father who couldn't come?"

"Well, my neighbor was glad to have me come but I came for myself. You see, I have seven children. All of them are small and my wife is sickly. I was drafted into the army and there was nobody to carry on at the farm. I couldn't hire a substitute. My thirteen dollars a month in the army wouldn't feed the family. It seemed as though I must go and they suffer. When we were in our greatest trouble about it, the very morning I was to report to camp, my neighbor's son came over to the house and offered to go to war for me. He told me he had nobody depending on him and could go better than I. He went to war, was wounded in Chickamauga, brought to a Nashville hospital, and this is his grave."

The stranger sobbed aloud. Under the private's name, I read the words which he had traced with his pencil in large, awkward letters. "DIED FOR ME." He had come all the way from his prairie home, at great cost to himself, to put this grateful mark upon the grave of his substitute."

You can find out more at civilwarstories.org.
Available at Amazon on Kindle and in paper.