Booknotes: The Army of Northern Virginia

New Arrival:

• The Army of Northern Virginia: Organization, Strength, Casualties 1861-1865 by Darrell L. Collins (McFarland, 2015).

I reviewed the Army of the Potomac companion a short while back. The new ANV volume follows the same pattern in that the information is gleaned primarily from the O.R. but its content and organization is different. Section I begins with the traditional army OB format for defined periods but the greater part is composed of commander (of corps, division, brigade, regiment, battalion, and battery) timelines. Section II is comprised of present for duty (PFD) reports, mostly at the division level, with some quantitative analysis of changes over time in the general summaries at the end. There will be more detail in the review. Section III, the last one, offers casualty reports by regiment and battery (with some more PFD data, including some regimental strength numbers and gun compositions) and also loss summaries. Two indexes, for commanders and units, are provided. It looks like a useful reference tool.