Thanks for the good comments, as always. I actually utilized Dr. Lowry’s assistance with court-martial records. When John Buford was appointed to serve as commander of the Reserve Brigade during the winter of 1863, he received the notice while serving on a general court-martial board of a Major Davidson. Being interested in this sort of thing, Dr. Lowry tracked down the records for me of the court-martial of Maj. Delozier Davidson, who served in the one the Regular infantry regiments. Davidson was cashiered for cowardice in the face of the enemy at Gaines Mill in June 1862. The whole thing was really very interesting indeed.

Brian, great point about the colonels. Of course, being a lawyer, this sort of thing appeals to me anyway.

Eric

I’d not limit the interest in Dr Lowry’s work to those who appreciate the ‘legal stuff’. In fact, I think the cases presented in ‘Tarnished Eagles’ (the Lt Col and Colonels’ book) are far more interesting for what they say about what happened as the huge Federal army was created, largely with amateur officers, virtually overnight. I opened the book originally to look into a couple of “my guys” (officers at Antietam), and ended up reading the whole thing.

As a person with some small military experience, I was struck by the lack of regard for discipline and order apparently prevalent among the Federal Volunteers, and the egos and competition felt among and between their officers. I’d heard of the problem, of course, but never had it brought to me so vividly. Fascinating stuff. If the Colonels presented were typical of the Army as a whole, it’s a wonder any of those boys ever got into combat!

BTW, In addition to several books, Dr Lowry and his wife have created a database of extracted information from _all_ US court martial cases of the War, called the Index Project. Oddly, there’s no web access offered to this data. Andy MacIsaac also blogged about this last month – http://maineheavies.blogspot.com/2006/01/exploring-civil-war-court-martial.html

Regards,
Brian

That’s a really nice reference. Many thanks for posting. I’ll add the Articles of War site to my list of great on-line freebie resources; the greatest of which (in my opinion) is the free searchable Official Records and Battles and Leaders at ehistory.com. There are lots of good Lincoln resources on the web as well (searchable Complete Works, etc.) Are there any other good online free resources you’d recommend?

(Incidentally, Dr. Lowry is very kind and helpful; he quickly answered a question I e-mailed to him on court martial records.)

Best regards, Russ