The Story of My Campaign: The Civil War Memoir of Captain Francis T. Moore, Second Illinois Calvary

Francis T. Moore

Published by Cornell University Press 2011

The Story of My Campaign

The Civil War Memoir of Captain Francis T. Moore, Second Illinois Calvary

Francis T. Moore
Edited by: Thomas Bahde
Preface by: Michael Fellman

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501757952

Overview
Contents

About this book

In 1861, Francis Moore appeared to be a perfectly ordinary, twenty-three year old man: a carriage maker in the bustling Mississippi River town of Quincy, Illinois. And there he might well have lived out his life in unadventurous comfort. But then the Civil War burst out, and Moore, along with most of his friends, like young men North and South, rushed to enlist in the army. His cavalry regiment soon set off for what proved to be four years of warfare, plunging him into harrowing experiences of battle that would have been unimaginable back in his small hometown and that uprooted him, body and soul, for the remainder of his life.

Enter The Story of My Campaign, the remarkable Civil War memoir of Captain Francis T. Moore, which historian Thomas Bahde here offers in an original edition to contemporary readers for the first time. Moore began the war as a private in Company L of the Second Illinois Volunteer Cavalry, and was soon promoted to lieutenant and then captain of his company. He spent most of the war fighting guerillas in Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana. He fought at the battle of Belmont, Kentucky, in 1861 and raided Mississippi with General Benjamin Grierson in 1864. He also battled Confederate leaders, such as Nathan Bedford Forrest and Leonidas Polk. His unflinching chronicle of small-scale and irregular warfare, combined with his intimate account of military life, make his memoir as absorbing as it is historically valuable.

Moore was also an unusually articulate young man with strong opinions about the war, the preservation of the Union, the institution of slavery, African Americans, the people of the South, and the Confederacy: his wartime observations and his postwar reflections on these themes provide not only a captivating narrative, they also provide readers with an opportunity to examine how the conflict endured in the memory of its veterans and the nation they served. The enormous social upheaval and staggering loss of human life during the Civil War cannot be overstated: the estimated 2 percent of Americans—or 620,000 people—who died in the conflict would be the equivalent of 6,000,000 people today. The Story of My Campaign offers an indelible account of this conflagration from the perspective of one of its survivors. It is evidence of a hard war fought—and the long hard life that followed.

Author / Editor information

Thomas Bahde is an Instructor in the Department of History at Oregon State University. The late Michael Fellman (1943–2012) was Professor of History Emeritus at Simon Fraser University. He is the author of seven books on American history and the Civil War, including Citizen Sherman: A Life of William T. Sherman and The Making of Robert E. Lee.

Reviews

The Story of My Campaign, an interesting story superbly edited by a gifted historian, represents an important stepping stone on the path to discerning what the American Civil War meant to those who fought in it.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	I
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	V
List of Images Publicly Available Download PDF	VII
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	IX
Foreword Michael Fellman Publicly Available Download PDF	XI
INTRODUCTION. Francis Moore's Memoir and the Construction of Civil War Memory Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
MOORE'S PREFACE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	15
CHAPTER ONE. 1861 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	17
CHAPTER TWO. 1862 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	64
CHAPTER THREE. 1863 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	117
CHAPTER FOUR. 1864 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	164
CHAPTER FIVE. 1865 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	214
EPILOGUE. Francis Moore, Civil War Veteran Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	257
Appendix A. Roster of Company L, "Delano's Dragoons," Second Illinois Cavalry Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	265
Appendix B. Letter of Francis C. Moore to Mary Moore, October 5, 1862 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	277
Appendix C. Letter of Francis C. Moore to Mary Moore, October 7, 1862 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	279
Appendix D. Captain Francis Moore to Adjutant-General Lorenzo Thomas Requesting Permission to Raise a Black Cavalry Regiment Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	281
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	283
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	297
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	303

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 326
Keywords: Captain Francis T. Moore; Thomas Bahde; Second Illinois Volunteer Cavalry; intimate account of military life; Civil War memoir; wartime observations; postwar reflections

eBook

Published: September 1, 2011
ISBN: 9781501757952