War’s Relentless Hand: Twelve Tales of Civil War Soldiers (Hardcover)
Louisiana State University Press
by Mark H. Dunkelman
If you’re not familiar with Mark H. Dunkelman you need to be. His best book, Brothers One and All, examined the esprit de corps of the 154th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment. His is the only regiment specific analysis of cohesion and motivated of the individual soldier and how that related to their regiment. Dunkelman keenly identifies the characteristics of Civil War esprit de corps and charts its development from recruitment and combat to the end of the war. His research is simply exhaustive. I do not believe any other regiment history stands close to Brothers One and All in its examination of the average soldier, his toils, follies, and hardships.
Dunkleman knows the 154th NY regiment inside and out. He has published no fewer than 4 books on the regiment and or its soldiers. Something like 20+ years of research. Now comes a new book from the author, titled, War’s Relentless Hand: Twelve Tales of Civil War Soldiers. All of the soldiers are from the 154th NY regiment.
My first thought was, “enough already.†Move on to another regiment. I am not a fan of recycled material into new books. But as I began to read the book I was mesmerized by the stories of valor, sadness, happiness, and hardships.
Dunkleman’s passion for this regiment cannot be overstated. His writing style has always been one of the things that draw me to his books, and here he does not disappoint. Each “story†reveals surprisingly new details about the men and at times the regiment. Each story provides context and illuminates the others. But most importantly, the narrative of the “twelve tales†creates a kind of psychological architecture that helps us get inside the thoughts, passions, and suffering of the average soldier.
War’s Relentless Hand is another fine book by Mark. H. Dunkelman.
Book Description
A happy-go-lucky soldier falls at Gettysburg. An officer survives a hair-raising escape after capture at Gettysburg, only to die in the Atlanta campaign. A young volunteer retreats into insanity. Though they did most of the fighting and dying in the American Civil War, “ordinary” soldiers largely went unheralded in their day and have long since been forgotten. Mark H. Dunkelman retrieves twelve of these common soldiers from obscurity and presents intimate accounts of their harrowing, heartbreaking, and occasionally humorous experiences. Their stories, true to the last historical detail yet as dramatic as the most powerful fiction, put a human face on the terrible ordeal of a country at war with itself. These were soldiers from the 154th New York Volunteer Infantry, a regiment that Dunkelman has studied for forty years. He weaves a complex and intimate portrait of each man—portraits that reveal how, even for the common soldier, war was a cataclysmic event forever marking his life and the lives of those around him. Through a vast array of primary sources, Dunkelman reconstructs the lives and legacies of soldiers who died on the battlefield and others who later died of war-related injuries, some who were permanently disabled and others who saw their families undergo trauma. A reluctant soldier is doomed by red tape. A veteran is crippled for life because of his brutal treatment as a prisoner of war. Father and son are killed at Chancellorsville. A dying private is immortalized by Walt Whitman. Separated by the war, a husband and wife agonize when their children contract a deadly disease. A veteran claiming he was blinded by campfire smoke is at the center of one of the largest pension scandals of the postwar era. Recalling a lost world, War’s Relentless Hand tells of the resilience, perseverance, and loyalty that distinguished these men, the families and communities that supported them, and the faith and character that sustained them. Though the full human cost and grief of the Civil War can never be calculated, deeply felt and carefully retold lives like these help convey its magnitude. AUTHOR BIO: Mark H. Dunkelman is the author of Brothers One and All: Esprit de Corps in a Civil War Regiment and other books on the 154th New York. An artist, writer, and musician as well, he lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
