Civil War Classic Revised

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Saturday, November 21, 2009

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History looking back with Ned Jilton

Published Thursday, October 1 2009 - (1) Comments

The book Co. "Aytch" First Tennessee Regiment or a Side Show of the Big Show written by Sam Watkins is a Civil War classic that is recommended or even required reading in many college history classes and was used heavily by Ken Burns in his Civil War series on PBS.

The book published in 1882 gives a first hand account about the time Watkins served in the Confederate Army of Tennessee and has now been revised and expanded by, are you ready for this, Sam Watkins himself!

A few years after the first printing (1,500) of Co. "Aytch" sold out and parts were used in publications across the nation Watkins was urged to produce a second, expanded, edition.

It seems that when Watkins was working on refining his first edition he ran into a problem with the cost of type setting. (Remember that type was set by hand in those days a letter at a time and there was a charge for the men that "set" each letter into place for printing.) To get around this cost he cut out some of what he wanted to say. It would still cost him $500 to get that second edition out. A lot of money in those days.

Sadly the revised edition 2nd printing never happened as Watkins died in 1901. His first edition book with all of his additions and corrections was passed down the generations of the family and remained lost in boxes of Watkins' belongings stored away.

In the year 2000 that book with the notes for the second edition was found and in 2007 the second edition of Co. "Aytch" was published by Providence House Publishers in Franklin, Tennessee.

The folks at Providence House did an interesting thing in order to preserve the integrity of the book while insuring that all of Watkins additions are there. The original text of the 1882 edition is in plain type while parts that Watkins added are in bold type. Parts of the original text that Watkins suggested deleting are in Italic type inside brackets while additions that he later omitted are in bold type inside brackets.

In addition the publishers took advantage of the massive amount of Civil War photographs available today and illustrated the book with relevant photos of Watkins and the men he served with in the war.

Co. "Aytch" is still the Civil War classic in which Sam Watkins "doesn't tell you everything that happened, just what he could see being a private soldier in the line."

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Another good read is History of the First Regiment of Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry by W. R. Carter. He was a Sgt. under Cpt. James P. Brownlow Co. C . My ancestor in the war was Pvt. Samuel H. Bruner Co. A .

Jess Williams | 10/2/2009 - 4:54 PM - ( Comment

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