Camp, March, and Battlefield (Expanded, Annotated)

If your notion of a Victorian pastor tending his flocks is stuffy and humorless, you haven't read A.M. Stewart. In one of the most articulate, witty, and compassionate accounts of life at the front during the American Civil War, Stewart will make you laugh and break your heart.

His profoundly ironic sense of humor took aim at all aspects of Army life, including that of tending to the spiritual needs of the men he saw fighting, being maimed, and dying all around him.

He had little use for commanders who wasted the lives entrusted to them. He wrote with passionate anguish about the horrors he saw and how senseless was much of the slaughter.

During a lull in the Battle of the Wilderness, Stewart came upon a wounded rebel:

"Dismounting, I drew near him, with the familiar salutation:
Well, friend, how are you getting along?"

Eyeing me with evident suspicion, mingled with some fierceness he slowly responded:
"Wall, stranger, bad enough."

"Any thing I can do for you?" was inquired.
Seeing I was not about to insult or kill him outright, his tone and manner became greatly modified, while responding: "See here, STRANGER! now, in the first place, I oughtn't to have been here."

Assuring him that no difference of opinion existed respecting that matter, and that this was not the time and place to have the matter discussed and settled, the question was repeated: "What can be done for you?"

Stewart's kindness soon had the young man in tears.

For less than you'd spend on gas going to the library, this long out-of-print volume is available as an affordable, well-formatted book for e-readers and smartphones.

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