Southern Soldier Stories COLOR="#000000" SIZE="+1"> By George Cary Eggleston 1998 Edition

This book is available through Elden Editions SIZE="+1">for $12.95 a copy. Click here for Order Form.

First published in 1898 and long out of print, George Cary Eggleston's Southern Soldier Stories are immensely entertaining and informative to the readers of today. Loaded with human interest and hard battlefield information, they give a rare balanced view of the war, unusually free of partisan acrimony, and just make really good reading. Now available in an inexpensive Centennial Edition with original pictures, Southern Soldier Stories reintroduces this fine soldier-writer to a new generation of Civil War enthusiasts. Raised in a Northern state, but bearing one of the fine old Virginia names, Eggleston came to Virginia as an educated but poor orphan at age 17, when he inherited an Amelia County plantation. Warmly welcomed by his father's Virginia relatives, he became a loyal and fervent "adopted" Virginian. Eggleston called this book "stories," because, as his original introduction carefully states, some of the stories came from his friends. A less scrupulous combat veteran than Eggleston would probably not have bothered with this. His military records reveal that he was in these places and with these units and at these fights. And while the literate, well-spoken Eggleston observes the war like a commissioned officer, he was really an enlisted man who got to see almost the whole war from an officer's point of view. He served as JEB Stuart's clerk, and in the artillery he served as a Sergeant-Major. As such he often (since he had attended Richmond College and become a lawyer), ended up defending his fellow soldiers in courts-martial. Eggleston was truly a professional writer in his post-war career. He edited several national magazines, and was in fact a professional Southern writer, who published dozens of books about the war and the ante-bellum South. His writing and editing skill shows in the hard, colorful detail of his fast-paced, humorous narratives. Eggleston had two distinct careers within the Confederate Army. He served with the First Virginia Cavalry (on JEB Stuart's staff), and as a sergeant with an artillery battery in South Carolina, a detached Virginia unit. His unit served as a company of sharpshooters in the Wilderness Campaign, was in the trenches at Petersburg, and narrowly avoided capture and then surrender at Appomatox. Many of Eggleston's short anecdotes of the war are intensely local, giving us the familiar place names of Northern Virginia and coastal South Carolina, for example. They show great sympathy for the courage and suffering of the soldiers of both sides, but also of the men and women whose interrupted civilian lives are cruelly caught up in the great conflict. He writes of women serving in combat roles with both the armies, and of the clash of rough soldiers, bad and good, with the needs of civilian survivors in their disrupted communities. Aside from his informative descriptions and fast-moving prose, what is so engaging about Eggleston is the obviously honest and likable approach he takes to his work as a storyteller. And few writers from the War can match Eggleston for humor that is still funny today. Eggleston's narratives bring a fresh immediacy and colorful detail to the study of the War Between the States that all readers should appreciate. $12.95 ea. + $2.75 for shipping (Add $1 shipping for each additional book up to $8. Larger orders actual shipping cost.) Virginia residents add 5.0% sales tax (65 cents per copy). Click here for Order Form.

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