Glorious Recollections

About the Book

Glorious Recollections: J. Howard Wert's Lost History of the 209th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, 1864-1865, including the Battles of Bermuda Hundred, Fort Stedman, and Petersburg is a Civil War regimental history originally written in 1894. It was not published at the time and has now been edited and supplemented for today's readers. Wert's text is both a detailed history and a devoted memoir. It describes his regiment's actions in the closing months of the war, particularly its participation in the battles of Bermuda Hundred, Fort Stedman, and Petersburg, and, after the war, its marching in the Grand Review. On the same pages, Wert also shows Civil War memory and veteran pride taking shape. The editors have supplemented Wert's manuscript with introductory and interpretive essays, personal documents from the soldiers, reminiscences from unit reunions, a biographical sketch of its commander, a collective portrait of one of its companies, and the rosters of the entire regiment. The publication of this regimental history, previously unknown, adds to our understanding of Pennsylvania soldiers serving late in the war. Many of them had prior service while others were enlisting for the first time, such as Wert himself. This history also deepens our understanding of J. Howard Wert, one of Pennsylvania's most productive historians, novelists, poets and educators in the late 19th century. His account of a notorious Harrisburg neighborhood, the "Old Eighth Ward," has been republished recently; his "lost world" science fiction novel, Alecto and Ebony, is being prepared for publication; his Civil War poetry has been well-known for over a century; his collection of Battle of Gettysburg artifacts is world famous; and with this book his accomplishment as a military historian comes to light.

About the Author

Prof. Barton received his doctorate in American Civilization at the University of Pennsylvania in 1974 and was a faculty member in the American Studies program at the Harrisburg campus of Penn State University for over four decades. His Civil War scholarship includes the books Goodmen: The Character of Civil War Soldiers (Penn State, 1981), The Civil War Soldier: A Historical Reader (NYU, 2002), co-edited with Prof. Larry Logue, and The Civil War Veteran: A Historical Reader (NYU, 2007) also co-edited with Logue. He and his students and co-editors have readied for publication the "lost" regimental history of the 209th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, the memoir of Sgt. Christian Lenker of the 19th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and the Civil War letters of Musician Joseph Bishop of the 23rd Connecticut Volunteers. All three volumes will be published by Xlibris. He is a member of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission’s planning group for the commemoration of the Civil War, and helped Dauphin County organize the 150th anniversary of its role in the Civil War. He was a co-organizer of a scholarly symposium on the US Colored Troops, held in conjunction with the reenactment of the USCT Grand Review in Harrisburg. The website he supervises, rawnjournals.com, contains the extensive antebellum diaries of Charles Rawn, anti-slavery attorney and a member of Harrisburg’s Enrollment Board during the Civil War. Prof. Barton has been a member of the Advisory Council of the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg.