In the Ranks

In the Ranks comprises of personal, eyewitness accounts of the American Civil War: the state of the battles; the realities of the technology and equipment; encampments and skirmishes of that conflict.

A collection of stunning first-hand recollections of the conflict, we hear various unabashed and frank summaries of the battles and campaigns of that conflict. The chaos and randomness of war, and how many of the events happened essentially through fortune or accident rather than sound and careful planning, is a recurring theme throughout the text. Comprised of veterans’ recollections, often the descriptions are bloody and violent – it is clear that the ordinary soldier was subject to terrifying sights.

An underappreciated classic of the U.S. Civil War era, In the Ranks is neither an edifying or glory-filled read. Rather it is a frank, realistic and forthrightly violent recounting of day-to-day fighting. Owing to new technologies such as rifling, and the improvement of artillery, the world had never seen carnage on such a scale.