The Road to Richmond: The Civil War Letters of Major Abner R. Small of the 16th Maine Volunteers.

by Harold A. Small, Earl J. Hess (Introduction)

Abner Small wrote one of the most honest, poignant, and moving memoirs to come out of the Civil War. He served as a non-commissioned officer in the Third Maine Infantry during the summer of 1861, experiencing battle for the first time at First Bull Run. As a recruiting officer, he helped to raise the Sixteenth Maine Infantry and served as its adjutant. The Sixteenth Maine gained fame for its heroic delaying action on July 1 at Gettysburg, where it lost 180 of its 200 men. It went on to serve in Grant’s Overland Campaign in Virginia.

Small was an articulate observer of all this. He wrote his memoirs with a keen sense of the irony of life during wartime, and with a gift for expression. His descriptions of the dead at Gettysburg, his characterizations of famous men such as Major General Oliver Otis Howard, and his reflections on the emotions of men under fire are outstanding. Small was captured in the battle of Globe Tavern on August 18, 1864. His account of prison life at Libby, Salisbury, and Danville is gripping. Small was exchanged just in time to lead his regiment in the final days of the war. His book reveals more of the inner soldier than almost any other account written by a Union veteran.

Genres: Civil War, Nonfiction

314 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1959

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting memoir of the Civil War from the perspective of a veteran who served as both an enlisted man and an officer, enlisting almost immediately after the firing on Ft. Sumter. He served as a corporal and sergeant in the 3rd Maine, seeing action at Bull Run before eventually going back to Maine to help recruit the 16th. He was promoted to lieutenant during the recruiting process and served as regimental adjutant until his capture in August of 1864. After five months in a Confederate prison, he was eventually exchanged. By the time the exchange was completed, he had recovered his strength from the near-starvation he'd experienced, and had made it back to the 16th, the war was over and he had been promoted to major.

Many books by veterans tend to glorify their experience. While Small certainly looks back on his time in the army with some measure of romanticism, he is clear on the brutality and stupidity of war. He never protests against slavery at any point in the book, clearly carries the racial attitudes of his time, and vacillates between patriotism and cynicism. Talking about what made a man attack an enemy he saw as similar to himself and had no personal quarrel with, he writes:

He might have the courage of his convictions, yet behind his bravery there lay something that mystified and repelled him. He didn't know what it was, so he went [into battle] to find out. I don't know that he ever got an answer. I didn't.

His dislike of Crane's classic Red Badge seems visceral, calling the idea that men in battle were driven by reason or even emotion "sheer rot." He describes men dealing with what today we would call PTSD, and argues that men who were labeled cowards because of losing their cool under fire were not responsible for their will failing them.

If you're looking for flowery prose, condemnation of slavery, exaltation of the Union and the cause, this isn't your book. If you're looking for a matter-of-fact description of the war through the clear eyes of a man who saw the worst and best of humanity and retells it with sincerity and a touch of humor, this is it.