Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

Bibliographical Note
Documentation for this book comes mostly from official sources written soon
after the events they record. Personal letters add further detail to the narrative.
Secondary sources corroborate and aid the interpretation of evidence furnished by
contemporary sources. I have avoided memoirs and reminiscences, for time tends
to dull the edge of memory. Although there is no guarantee that an official report
was entirely truthful, the Articles of War forbade filing false musters or returns and
offenders were to be cashiered, that is, “utterly disabled to have or hold any office
or employment in the service of the United States.” This tended to encourage a
degree of honesty not always found in accounts rendered by old men who are not
under oath. 1
In selecting sources, I have tried to cite the most easily accessible version of a
document that exists in both manuscript and published forms: for instance, when a
manuscript report or letter housed at the National Archives also appears in The War
of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate
Armies—published in 128 volumes between 1880 and 1901 and widely available in
two paper reprints, a CD-ROM, and an online edition—I have cited the published
version (commonly abbreviated OR, for Official Records). The Adjutant General’s
Office in the War Department was responsible for compiling the Official Records,
and most of the editorial work was done by Army officers detailed from their
regiments. Compilers took reports and correspondence from War Department files to
document military operations (Series 1 of the Official Records, fifty-three volumes
bound as 111); prisoners of war and related matters (Series 2, eight volumes); Union
recruitment, including the draft (Series 3, five volumes); and records of the
Confederate government (Series 4, four volumes). Some of the documents were
returned to their original files; others were not. This latter class constitutes the ninetyone
shelf feet of the National Archives’ “Civil War Records Retained by the War
Records Office” (Record Group 94, Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, Entries
729–33). The idea of “objective” or “scientific” history written by professionals was
in its infancy during the last two decades of the nineteenth century, confined for the
most part to a few graduate schools, and the editors of the Official Records therefore
felt free to alter punctuation and paragraphing, practices which compilers of modern
1 Revised United States Army Regulations of 1861 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing
Office, 1863), p. 488.