A Very Useful Website

I wanted to offer a ringing endorsement of one of Chris Wehner’s projects. Chris runs a web site called Soldier Studies. Here’s the mission statement:

This site is dedicated to the preservation of American Civil War information, particularly the correspondence and diary entries of soldiers who served in the field and elsewhere. We hope that by providing a comprehensive and searchable archive of this information a more complete picture of one of the bloodiest chapters in American history can be better understood by researchers, historians, and students alike. Unlike other Civil War databases, this one will remain free and open to the public.

In the course of searching for primary source material for our study of the retreat from Gettysburg, I found three really outstanding accounts in the database on Chris’ site. But for the site, I never would have located those materials or had the opportunity to use them in our manuscript.

Once we get the manuscript done and turn it in to Ted Savas, I will go through my massive collection of material (I have multiple banker’s boxes full of primary source materials from 15+ years of serious researching) and see about contributing some of it to the web site.

In the meantime, do yourself a favor and check it out. There’s something useful and interesting there for almost anyone interested in the Late Unpleasantness. Thanks for what you do, Chris.