by Lesley J. Gordon
A Broken Regiment recounts the tragic history of one of the
Civil War's most ill-fated Union military units. Organized in the late summer
of 1862, the 16th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry was unprepared for battle a
month later, when it entered the fight at Antietam. The results were
catastrophic: nearly a quarter of the men were killed or wounded, and Connecticut's
16th panicked and fled the field. In the years that followed, the regiment
participated in minor skirmishes before surrendering en masse in North Carolina
in 1864. Most of its members spent months in southern prison camps, including
the notorious Andersonville stockade, where disease and starvation took the
lives of over one hundred members of the unit.
The struggles of the 16th led survivors to reflect on the
true nature of their military experience during and after the war, and
questions of cowardice and courage, patriotism and purpose, were often foremost
in their thoughts. Over time, competing stories emerged of who they were, why
they endured what they did, and how they should be remembered. By the end of
the century, their collective recollections reshaped this troubling and
traumatic past, and the "unfortunate regiment" emerged as "The
Brave Sixteenth," their individual memories and accounts altered to fit
the more heroic contours of the Union victory.
The product of over a decade of research, Lesley J. Gordon's
A Broken Regiment illuminates this unit's complex history amid the interplay of
various, and often competing, voices. The result is a fascinating and
heartrending story of one regiment's wartime and postwar struggles.
About the Author
Lesley J. Gordon
is professor of history at Akron University, author of General George E.
Pickett in Life and Legend, and coeditor of Intimate Strategies of the Civil
War: Military Commanders and Their Wives.
ISBN 978-0807157305, LSU Press, © 2014, Hardcover, 408
pages, Photographs, Maps, Appendix, End Notes & Index. $49.95. To
purchase this book click HERE.
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