Review: Vanishing Footprints

Vanishing Footprints: The Twenty-Second Iowa Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War
By Samuel D. Pryce. Edited by Jeffry C. Burden

In the stacks of the State Historical Society of Iowa in Iowa City, lies Samuel D. Pryce’s manuscript, “Vanishing Footprints: The Twenty-Second Iowa Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War.” Begun in Pryce’s middle age, the manuscript was reasonably complete enough to warrant the approval of the 22nd Iowa Regimental Association in 1903, but the volume was never published. Instead, Mr. Pryce kept working at it, adding things here, pasting things there, often times adding his thoughts about topics unrelated to the 22nd Iowa Infantry or the Civil War. By the time of his death in 1923 Pryce’s manuscript had grown to a mammoth 827 densely typed pages.

Over a century has passed since the 22nd Iowa Regimental Association gave its stamp of approval to the project. Now at last thanks to the efforts of editor Jeffry C. Burden and the Press of the Camp Pope Bookshop, Pryce’s lifework has at long last been published. Mr. Burden has done an exemplary job in paring down Pryce’s massive manuscript into an easily read soft cover book of 256 pages. Mr. Burden has also managed to include 52 photographs, 11 maps, footnotes, bibliography and an index.

One hundred years after the close of the American Civil War Johnny Rivers sung the question “Where have all the soldiers gone?” The first chapter of Pryce’s regimental history of the 22nd Iowa Volunteer Infantry attempts to answer a very similar question. The appropriately titled chapter, “The 22nd Iowa: Comrades Remembered,” is a nostalgic and often tragic accounting fates of his brothers in arms both during the war, and for those who survived, after it. While reading this opening chapter I was reminded of yet another musical question from the 1960’s, “Anybody here seen my old friend John? Can you tell me where he’s gone?”

Pryce, who served as the adjutant of the 22nd Iowa for many of its 36 months in service, narrates the unit’s history in a linear fashion, beginning in the summer of 1862 and follows the regiment through to their return to Iowa and discharge in late July & early August 1865. During its term of service the 22nd saw service guarding railroads in southeast Missouri, participated in the Vicksburg Campaign, then the Overland Texas Expedition and ending up on the Texas coast. Five companies of the 22nd were detached and participated in the Red River Campaign, after which the unit was reunited and shipped out for service in the Shenandoah Valley at Winchester, Fisher’s Hill & Cedar Creek. Before returning home the 22nd finished its service as an occupational force in North Carolina and Georgia.

Throughout the book, Pryce’s easygoing and conversational literary style shines through. Indeed, it is a triumph of Mr. Burden’s editing that Mr. Pryce’s voice seems to come alive. His wit, and humorous anecdotes are laced throughout the book.

Though the soldiers about whom Johnny Rivers sang were fighting a war very much different than those of a century earlier, the answer to his musical question remains the same, “Gone to Graveyards, everyone.” One hundred forty-four years have passed since the end of the Civil War, and it has been fifty years since the deaths of its last veterans. Eighty-six years after his death the voice Samuel D. Pryce can now be heard, if not from beyond the grave, then something very akin it.

ISBN 978-1-929919-14-7, The Camp Pope Bookshop, © 2008, Softcover, 256 pages, 52 photographs, 11 maps, footnotes, bibliography, index. $18.95