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General John Bratton: Sumter to Appomattox, In Letters to His Wife. By J. Luke Austin. (Sewanee, Tenn.: Proctor's Hall Press, c. 2003. Pp. xviii, 315. $19.95, ISBN 0-9706214-3-4.)
While Father Is Away: The Civil War Letters of William H. Bradbury. Edited by Jennifer Cain Bohrnstedt. Compiled by Kassandra R. Chancy. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, c. 2003. Pp. xii, 386. $40.00, ISBN 0-8131-2259-7.)
John Bration, a South Carolina planter who served steadily throughout the Civil War, is not a familiar name. Although he eventually commanded a brigade of South Carolinians and fought well at Seven Pines, he either missed or was on the margins of most of the major battles fought by the Army of Northern Virginia. William H. Bradbury's war could hardly have been more different. The English immigrant, lawyer, and land speculator from Illinois apparently never fired a gun, traveled by wagon when his army was on the march, and as a headquarters clerk was virtually always far from the fighting.
Bratton comes off as a well-educated, thoughtful, and attentive officer and husband. His letters-which are only excerpted here-contain useful litlle moments and details. Describing a skirmish, he reported that he and his brother-in-law found themselves taking cover from federal fire. "I remarked to Bev," he wrote his wife dryly, "that it was well our wives could not know our condition" (p. 53). Bratton was wounded and captured at Seven Pines;...