Book Review
The Second Vermont Volunteer Infantry Regiment, 1861-1865, by Paul G. Zeller. Illustrated, maps, regimental roster, endnotes, bibliography, index, 360 pp., 2002. McFarland & Company, Inc., Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640, $45 ($49 postpaid).
The Second Vermont Volunteer Infantry was the first of the three years' regiments recruited in Vermont, the first regiment engaged in a major battle (Bull Run) and the senior regiment in the famous First Vermont Brigade. During its four-year career, the Second Vermont Infantry participated in 28 engagements, from Bull Run to Sailor's Creek. It suffered 1077 casualties, of whom 223 were killed or mortally wounded in action, 136 died of disease, 22 died in Confederate prisons, 3 died from accidents, 1 was executed and 692 were wounded. Fox's Regimental Losses states "The greatest loss of life in any one brigade during the war occurred in the Vermont Brigade of the Second (Getty's) Division, Sixth Corps." The Second Vermont suffered more combat deaths than any other regiment in the brigade, and substantially more wounded than any of the other regiments. Ironically, it was also one of the healthier regiments in the brigade, only the Fifth regiment suffering fewer deaths by disease than the Second.
The Second Vermont suffered under several mediocre field commanders, including Pope, McClellan, Burnside and Hooker. It endured even more under U. S. Grant, at the beginning of the Overland Campaign, where the regiment and the entire brigade incurred devastating losses. Along the way it gained a couple of well-earned reputations, for marching and for fighting, securing a well-deserved comparison with an earlier generation of Green Mountain Boys. "Put the Vermonters Ahead" was General John Sedgwick's marching order, and woe to the regiments who could not keep up with them!
Perhaps because of the four years of living hell that the brigade endured, none of the veterans of the unit itself, who could have written best about it, attempted to pen a full-scale history of any of the regiments in the Old Vermont Brigade. In the intervening years since the July 1, 1948, death of the last surviving member of the Second Vermont Regiment, Private Henry A. Horton, of Stamford, no one else has tried to do it either, until now. Today it becomes the first Vermont infantry regiment to receive the credit it so richly deserves, with the publication of a scholarly, well researched, handsomely illustrated and professionally bound history. What a treat!
Paul Zeller has skillfully blended the birth, life and death many of the more than 1,850 other Green Mountain Boys in the regiment, into an extremely readable volume. He obviously did his homework. Evidence of long hours in the musty halls of the National Archives is displayed in the minute personal details he relates for many of the soldiers. The diversity of the bibliographic resources is evidence he burrowed into every nook and cranny, not just established archives, to find first-person accounts to augment a broad list of secondary sources. And he used endnotes; thank you sir!
Zeller is a talented writer, melding the smallest details in the lives of individual soldiers in camp, on the field, and at home after the war, with tactical descriptions of battlefields and the overall strategy of the various campaigns in which the Second Vermont participated in, creating an easy-to-read narrative that kept this reviewer up all night perusing. He did not try to cover up the blemishes either, giving as much detail to the consequences soldiers experienced after deserting as to the pain of sick soldiers and the privations endured by courageous soldiers that were wounded in battle.
Zeller's excellent text and a large number of well-captioned photographs are augmented by a series of detailed, but easy to digest, maps by noted cartographer George Skoch. The overall pleasing-to-the-eye appearance of the volume and its durable case binding does justice to, and will help preserve, the scholarship contained therein. The very few typographical errors found do not detract from the overall impression of the book.
This substantive work will be the basis upon which all future Vermont regimental histories are judged. A very impressive volume! Not bad for a flatlander!
Tom Ledoux
Tom Ledoux is the creator and webmaster of the Vermont in the Civil War web project, VermontCivilWar.org. He has an M.A. in military studies (Civil War studies) from American Military University.
Available from
McFarland & Co., Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
Tel. 336-246-4460
Fax 336-246-5018
Toll Free: 1-800-253-2187
online: www.mcfarlandpub.com
Other reviews:
A Melancholy Affair At The Weldon Railroad
No Braver Deeds, The Story of the Equinox Guards
Notes of Army and Prison Life 1862-1865.
Occasional Paper #20. "Dear Wife" The civil War Letters of Chester K. Leach
They Could Not Have Done Better; Thomas O. Seaver and The 3rd Vermont Infantry
We Are Coming Father Abra'am The History of the 9th Vermont Volunteer Infantry 1862-1865
