Booknotes: When Paper Collar Bandbox Soldiers Fight

New Arrival:

• When Paper Collar Bandbox Soldiers Fight: A History of the 4th West Virginia Volunteer Infantry 1861-1865 by Philip Hatfield & Terry Lowry (35th Star Pub, 2024).

In helping keep alive the Civil War history of the war in West(ern) Virginia, no single press is doing more than Steve Cunningham's 35th Star Publishing. Among its stable of authors are some of the most recognizable and most prolific chroniclers of the region's Civil War history, including Terry Lowry, Joe Geiger, Richard Armstrong, and Philip Hatfield. Coverage runs the entire gamut from battle and campaign histories to unit studies, edited journal and letter compilations, county histories, and memory studies. Lowry's earlier work in particular sparked my own interest in the Virginia fighting on the other side of the Alleghenies. Now he has teamed up with Philip Hatfield to produced another regimental history, When Paper Collar Bandbox Soldiers Fight: A History of the 4th West Virginia Volunteer Infantry 1861-1865.

From the description: "The 4th Regiment West Virginia Volunteer Infantry stepped into a cauldron of fire and blood during the Civil War. Comprised of men from Ohio and [West] Virginia, the regiment organized primarily at Point Pleasant during 1861-1862, under Colonel Joseph A.J. Lightburn. Initially engaged in scouting and small skirmishes among the rough, mountainous terrain of western Virginia, the regiment saw its first combat at the Battle of Charleston on September 13, 1862." You might recall that Lowry previously authored the new standard history of the Battle of Charleston and the rest of the 1862 Kanawha Valley Campaign [site review].

Like many other regiments from the Mountain State, the 4th fought both locally and afar. Though West Virginia soldiers are not those that first come to mind when we talk about "paper collar" soldiers, it was when the men of the 4th met up with Grant's western veterans that the full meaning of the book's title emerges. More from the description: "The 4th West Virginia transferred to Mississippi in January 1863, under General William T. Sherman, where they were initially mocked and jeered by the hard fought midwestern troops of the XV Corps who believed that troops in the eastern theatre were generally softer than they due to being much better supplied. They called them "Paper collar, bandbox soldiers," but during the Federal assaults on the massive Stockade Redan at Vicksburg on May 19 and 22, 1863, the regiment suffered 223 casualties with six men receiving the Medal of Honor, forever silencing their antagonists."

After Vicksburg fell, the West Virginians continued to fight in the West before finally returning closer to home. "The regiment also fought at the Battle of Missionary Ridge (Chattanooga) and in the 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign. This comprehensive history tells the compelling story of the regiment's four arduous and bloody years of service in both the eastern and western theatres of the Civil War." In addition to the unit history narrative, the book also includes a set of company rosters (Appendix A) taken from the WV Adjutant General's Report from December1864. A host of photographic images of men from the regiment are collected in another appendix.