Publication of Note | March 2020
Frederick W. Wild, “Memoirs and History of Capt. F.W. Alexander’s Baltimore Battery of Light Artillery U.S.V. (Baltimore, MD: Frederick W. Wild, 1912)
*Throughout 2020 the “Publication of Note” portion of the newsletter will highlight some of our director’s favorite regimental histories or collections of published primary sources.
Regimental histories have long been a staple for Civil War historians. Although regimental histories sometimes suffer from embellishment of fact and hindsight, they are nonetheless valuable resources for historians wishing to gain insight into the movements, experiences and thoughts of Civil War soldiers. Wild’s regimental history of the Baltimore Light Artillery is no exception to this.
Organized in the summer of 1862 under Frederick W. Alexander, the Baltimore Light Artillery’s most significant service in the Shenandoah Valley came in 1863 as part of Union general Robert H. Milroy’s division. During the Second Battle of Winchester, particularly the fighting on June 14, 1863, the Baltimore Light Artillery manned the guns inside of Star Fort. Wild’s regimental history offers candid and crisp descriptions of the defense of Start Fort, singles out the efforts of various members of the battery for heroic exploits during the fighting, and ably chronicles the Union retreat, and the capture of many from the battery north of Winchester during the morning of June 15, 1863.
In addition to the detailed descriptions of the Second Battle of Winchester, the regimental history also offers some insight into the experiences of African Americans in Winchester in 1863 and also highlights the various opinions members of the battery possessed about transforming the conflict from one to preserve the Union into one that would simultaneously destroy slavery after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863.
Wild’s regimental history then offers more than merely another source to understand one of the many engagements fought in Winchester, but offers a lens through which to examine emancipation. Although copies of this regimental history can still be found through rare book dealers, it is available online, for free, at this link https://archive.org/details/memoirshistoryof00wild/page/n9/mode/2up.
