Review - "Colonels in Blue—U.S. Colored Troops, U.S. Armed Forces, Staff Officers and Special Units: A Civil War Biographical Dictionary" by Roger Hunt

[Colonels in Blue—U.S. Colored Troops, U.S. Armed Forces, Staff Officers and Special Units: A Civil War Biographical Dictionary by Roger D. Hunt (McFarland, 2022). Softcover, photos, bibliography, index. Pages:xi,320. ISBN:978-1-4766-8619-6. $39.95]

Roger Hunt's Colonels in Blue—U.S. Colored Troops, U.S. Armed Forces, Staff Officers and Special Units: A Civil War Biographical Dictionary is the eighth and final installment in the author's authoritative Colonels in Blue series. Now researchers and other interested individuals have ready access to the field's most comprehensive collection of biographical details for individuals who "attained the rank of colonel in the Union Army but failed to win promotion to brigadier general or brevet brigadier general" in federal, state, and territorial service during the American Civil War.

Hunt's project sees its completion through this volume's thorough scouring of all avenues of federal service. Included are colonels of US Colored Troops (the volume's largest section); Regular Army colonels of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, along with US Army bureau chiefs and staff corps; US Marine Corps; US Sharpshooters; US Veteran Volunteers (1 engineer and 9 infantry regiments); US Volunteers (6 late-war infantry regiments); Veteran Reserve Corps; Aides-de-Camp; Chief Quartermasters; Depot Commissaries of Subsistence; and Miscellaneous. Each of the eleven sections referenced above begins with a unit table that lists each commanding colonel, his muster in date, and his date of exit through either resignation, promotion, discharge, dismissal, death, or mustering out of service.

Within each section, the colonels are arranged alphabetically. Where applicable and/or known, individual entries include a brief Civil War service history, birth and death date and place, occupation(s), civilian public offices/honors, educational background, burial place, a miscellaneous section (most commonly consisting of residence information), and a full reference list. The service history sketch lists appointments, promotions, higher formation attachments, episodes of incapacitation (through sickness/wounds/capture), and battle honors. One also frequently finds disciplinary notes related to personal or professional conduct in service, mainly for those colonels who committed acts of severe misconduct or were for a variety of reasons judged militarily unfit for command. The bullet point-type presentation format (rather than paragraph narrative) saves both page space and user time in looking up essential dates and bits of information. The reference list that concludes each entry draws upon a large amount and variety of sources, including books, periodicals, government documents (ex. pension records), archival collections, and a vast number of newspaper articles.

A salient feature of Hunt's research is the amount of effort put into finding photographs of as many colonels as possible. The success rate appears to be something more than half, which is rather impressive given the challenges of finding images of the many obscure officers featured in these books. Some colonels even have more than one photo included. Assuredly, many of these images are published for the first time in the pages of this series. At this point, Hunt undoubtedly possesses one of the largest, if not the largest, personal collection of these photographs.

Every serious Civil War researcher and writer will benefit immensely from having access to Hunt's Colonels in Blue series. The reference material accessibly arranged in each volume is especially relevant to authors of military history narratives, where a very large proportion of pages have some from of discussion related to officers of this rank. Highly recommended.