Joseph Altsheler's Civil War series

[Ravenmount]

Here are a few gems I downloaded from one of my favorite sites on the Internet. Project Gutenberg provides tens of thousands of free texts, including historical documents, classic fiction, philosophy, and lots more. I try to read at least a few items from this vast and growing collection every month. I also try not to reread books from that site because there is so much to read that I'd never get to enjoy all the books I want to read if I reread too many. Nonetheless I have this constant itch to reread this series of novels by Joseph Altsheler. The first book by Altsheler on the Civil War, Before the Dawn, is not actually in the series, but I read it first and liked it well enough to read more.

Before the Dawn: A Story of the Fall of Richmond

The rest of these novels follow two related boys who wind up fighting on opposite sides during the Civil War. These books offer almost first-hand accounts of the war, with such realism and historical accuracy that Amazon has them listed under history. Altsheler was a journalist who lived in the generation after the war, researching and writing this series just over 20 years after the war. Thus he didn’t experience the war first-hand, but he interviewed many soldiers from both sides, something later Civil War novelists and historians have wished they could do instead of relying on diaries and letters.

The result of Altsheler's work is a fantastic story that immerses the reader in the human sides of this bloody and often vicious war. His characters relate the fear and discomfort of military campaigns and the additional strain a civil war places on families near the borders between disputing groups, with many anecdotes that I am sure came almost verbatim from interviewed survivors of the war. These are still fiction books, of course, and one should not use them as source material for history exams on the Civil War. Altsheler's books are still very well-researched and as true to fact as the novels permit, and for anyone wanting to learn about this pivotal era in United States history these books are a must read series.

The Guns of Bull Run: A Story of the Civil War’s Eve
The Guns of Shiloh: A Story of the Great Western Campaign
The Scouts of Stonewall: The Story of the Great Valley Campaign
The Sword of Antietam: A Story of the Nation’s Crisis
The Star of Gettysburg: A Story of Southern High Tide 1
The Rock of Chickamauga: A Story of the Western Crisis
The Shades of the Wilderness: A Story of Lee’s Great Stand
The Tree of Appomattox

These books are also available as etexts and in print on Amazon, but they are available free on Project Gutenberg (I'd provide the links to the Project Gutenberg etexts but I am still too new to be allowed to post URLs). Altsheler also wrote 6 other series of historical fiction, which are also well worth reading if they are at all like his Civil War stories.