Booknotes: Crossing Antietam

New Arrival:

• Crossing Antietam: The Civil War Letters of Captain Henry Augustus Sand, Company A, 103rd New York Volunteers by Henry August Sand, edited by Peter H. Sand and John F. McLaughlin (McFarland, 2015).

Captain Sand led Company A of the 103rd NY (a.k.a. the "German Grenadiers" or "Seward's Infantry"). He campaigned with the regiment in North Carolina and Virginia before being mortally wounded at Antietam. "He penned a letter to his family in Brooklyn Heights while lying on the battlefield, and then three more before dying of his wounds six weeks later. His complete correspondence from the field, covering the first 18 months of the Civil War, paints a vivid picture of combat and life in a 19th-century German-Irish immigrant family." "His letters were collected and transcribed by his sister, Emily Isabella Rossire nee Sand, and illustrated with her own watercolors of the Antietam battlefield and sketches by their younger brother, Maximilian Edward Sand [these are reproduced in color]." The book includes all 78 letters with attached footnotes, some additional related material and a family history appendix.