Writing & Fighting the Confederate War: The Letters of Peter Wellington Alexander, Confederate War Correspondent. Ed. by William Styple. 268 pp., hc, Index.
Writing & Fighting the Confederate War: The Letters of Peter Wellington Alexander
edited by William B. Styple
Once again William B. Styple scores a high-five with the Civil War community. In the past he has shared with us as author or editor/compiler a number of critically acclaimed titles. The last off the press in June 2000 was Writing and Fighting the Civil War: Soldier Correspondence to the New York Sunday Mercury. He also teamed with Brian Pohanka to co-author, direct and produce the Echoes of the Blue & Gray video series.
This time Styple again employs his talents as a sleuth and researcher to give us Writing & Fighting the Confederate War: The Letters of Peter Wellington Alexander, Confederate War Correspondent. Unlike his past endeavor, Stypleís latest focuses on the Confederacy and its life and death as seen and experienced by Peter Wellington Alexander, its observant special correspondent for the Savannah Republican.
On occasions, during the Fredericksburg Campaign and on the march to Gettysburg, when Alexander was ill with ìcamp feverî, friend and protegeí Capt. Virgil A. S. Parks filled in providing a soldierís view to the Republican as ìV.A.S.P.î Unfortunately Parks lost his life at Gettysburg.
As heretofore, as with the Sunday Mercury book, Alexanderís correspondence expanded my Civil War horizons. Alexander spends much of the war in Richmond and in the field with the Army of Northern Virginia and its predecessor, the Army of the Potomac. He also travels west to spend key time with Albert Sidney Johnstonís and P.G. T. Beauregardís Army of the Mississippi in the late winter and spring of 1862. He writes as an eyewitness of Shiloh and the siege of Corinth. By mid-summer he is back in Virginia.
Like the very best of todayís war correspondents, Alexander seemingly has a sixth sense to be where the action is. This despite articles deemed to be too critical of the Richmond government that occasionally results in denial by the bureaucracy of his credentials to visit the armies.
His views of Confederate politicians and military leaders are candid. Readers will observe that, long before Brandy Station and Gettysburg, he is a Jeb Stuart critic. Since most of his readers are Georgians, activities of military and political leaders and soldiers from the Empire State are highlighted. This is refreshing because of the high profile given to Virginians by the widely quoted Richmond press.
A dedicated Confederate partisan, Alexander, even in the new governmentís darkest days, sought in his writings to boost morale that there was light at the end of the tunnel. Too bad that he never found the time to write his contemplated history of the Confederacy.
The Civil War as reported by Peter Wellington Alexander provides a welcome perspective of the conflict as seen by a journalist. So again we are indebted to Bill Styple for making this resource available.
Edwin C. Bearss
Historian Emeritus
National Park Service