Mountaineers In Gray: The Nineteenth Tennessee Volunteer Infantry Regiment, C. S. A.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Tome on the Civil War in East Tennessee and Beyond
Review: Scholarly, yet highly readable. Professor Fowler's new book provides needed background on the motivations of East Tennessee's Confederate volunteers, their wartime service, their medical histories and, uniquely, their post-war lives.

In the tradition of Inscoe, Fisher, McKenzie, Groce, et al, "Mountaineers in Gray" sheds much more light on East Tennessee's Confederates from Hamilton, Knox, Washington, Sullivan, Rhea, McMinn, Polk and Hawkins counties.

Organized by the wealthy Anderson County attorney and plantation owner, Col. David H. Cummings, the Nineteenth fought in almost all of the battles in the Western Theatre from 1861-65. After he was wounded at Shiloh, Col. Cummings joined his son as a cotton factor in New Orleans, Louisiana and on their plantation near Baton Rouge. Col. F.M. Walker replaced him.

The 62 pages of Endnotes and Bibliography are worth the price of the book by themselves for any serious student of the war in the Western Theatre.

The design and production of this and other recent University of Tennessee Press books is worthy of emulation by other publishers. Their method of providing headings (ie., "Notes to Pages 12-18") for the endnotes is especially noteworthy.

As a Past-President of the Knoxville Civil War Roundtable, I can recommend this landmark treatise without reservation.