The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union

by Bell Irvin Wiley

The Life of Billy Yank is a frank, intimate, and warm study of the Union soldier by one of the most prolific and revered of all Civil War historians. Here, through excerpts from wartime letters and diaries and from other carefully documented research, Bell Irvin Wiley presents an absorbing account of the small and sometimes moving events that made up the daily life of the common Union soldier, a moral but fallible human who could laugh at lewd jokes, be stripped of his courage under fire, or save an entire company from certain death.

Genres: Civil War, History, American Civil War, Nonfiction, American History, War, Military History

488 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

Born into rural Tennessee and schooled at Asbury College (BA, 1928) and Yale University (PhD, 1933), Bell Irvin Wiley became a historical officer of the Second Army in World War II and taught history the University of Mississippi, Louisiana State University, Oxford University, and Emory University. He published groundbreaking works, such as Southern Negroes, 1861-65 (1938), was named President of the Southern Historians Association (1955), and became chairman of President Eisenhower's National Civil War Centennial Commission (1961). He died in 1980.