Don’t Hurry Me Down to Hades: The Civil War in the Words of Those Who Lived It

This well-researched venture reveals the human side of the Civil War through correspondence and documents from the period. Ural, associate professor of history at the University of Southern Mississippi, takes us chronologically through the war in its participants’ own words; soldiers and civilians alike. Emancipation is dealt with early on with the fair assessment that nearly no one at the time would admit that this issue was the true cause. Elsewhere, amid the claims and counterclaims of heroism at the Battle of Shiloh, there are musings of soldiers about everything from shooting other men to dreams of pie and the difficulties of parents on the home front having to blame a poor Christmas on the fact that “Santaclause had gone to war.” Ural does an admirable job of mixing items, such as Lincoln’s struggle with balancing politics, his feelings on slavery to the strong human-interest story of the era: the search for the family of the nameless soldier who turned out to be Amos Humiston. Ural’s fine combination of military history and personal saga uses original documents to excellent effect. Photos. (Oct.)