Booknotes: They Fought for the Union

New Arrival:
• They Fought for the Union: A History of the First Delaware Volunteers in the Army of the Potomac by Jeffrey R. Biggs (Belli Civilis Pr - Author, 2016).

The First Delaware largely flew under the radar during its initial twelve months of service. It first gained national recognition at Antietam, then fought in most of the Second Corps's major battles from that point until the end of the war in the eastern theater. Even though there has been a substantial upsurge in Border State scholarship in recent years, tiny Delaware remains largely overlooked. Biggs's new unit history aims to give the 1st regiment its just due. "They Fought For the Union revisits these border state soldiers through a wealth of untapped sources, personal accounts and soldier's diaries while always placing these conflicted soldiers into the larger context of the Army of the Potomac's struggles in the Eastern Theatre of the war." Self-published, it nevertheless looks better than many of the professionally put together Civil War books we see today, and (at nearly 450 pages of narrative) its treatment of the unit's wartime service appears quite comprehensive. Included are a number of maps, mostly modified from archival originals.