Mr. Dunn Browne's Experiences in the Army: The Civil War Letters of Samuel W. Fiske (North's Civil War Series, 6)

The missives of Civil War soldiers have been eagerly read by the general public and the serious scholar for over 130 years. These letters by Capt. Samuel Wheelock Fiske, a minister who served from Antietam to the Wilderness with the Army of the Potomac's 14th Connecticut volunteers, will be popular with both groups. A prewar correspondent and humorist for the Springfield Republican, he continued writing during the conflict under the pseudonym Dunn Browne, informing and entertaining readers with his experiences and opinions on a wide range of political, military, religious, and social topics. The letters were originally compiled for an 1866 edition of the same name. The annotations by respected historian Sears (e.g., Chancellorsville, LJ 1/97) add to the value of the letters and make this edition more useful as well as accessible.

Mr. Dunn Browne's Experiences in the Army, edited by noted Civil War writer Stephen Sears, provides a candid, often witty, behind-the-scenes look at the Civil War. A collection of battlefront letters composed by Browne (pseudonym of Captain Samuel Wheelock Fiske of the 14th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry), this book is unique in the literature of the Civil War. Fiske was at once a fighting infantryman and an experienced newspaper correspondent, and no one in this war, on either side, wrote better accounts of a soldier's experiences in battle and in camp. From Antietam to the Wilderness, readers of the Springfield Republican had Dunn Browne to explain to them just how it was in the Army of the Potomac. In addition, he was an investigative reporter (before that term was invented) who delved into the follies of the army bureaucracy, the sophistries of the Copperheads, and the abuses of conscription. He delved, too, into the complexities of why men fight.

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...provides lively, candid reading and a 'you are there' feeling.

A Connecticut newspaper reporter serves in the Federal army, describing witty behind-the-scenes follies of the army bureacracy and the hardship of the daily life of the Civil War soldier