Voices from the Civil War: A Documentary of the Great American Conflict

by Milton Meltzer (Editor)

A chronicle of the War between the States presents information culled from letters, diaries, memoirs, songs, speeches, articles, and others to provide eyewitness accounts of the war's battles, in the North and the South. Reprint.

Genres: Memoir

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Milton Meltzer wrote 110 books, five of which were nominated for the National Book Award. With Langston Hughes, he co-authored A Pictorial History of Black Americans, now in its sixth edition. He received the 2001 Laura Ingalls Wilder Award for his contribution to children's literature, the 1986 Jane Addams Peace Association Children's Book Award, and the 2000 Regina Medal. He died in New York City of esophageal cancer at age 94.

Reviews

[Jalen Figgins · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book Voices from the Civil War was a great read and it showed me two point of views from two soldiers from both sides, The confederates and the Union. On the confederates, you had a man named Bobby and he was from the state of Georgia and you had Johnny from the Union. You went through the war from their two views from them fighting in the war and what it was like just being near the areas of some of the battles fought. I found it amazing on how instead of it being from one persons point of view, they showed the actual primary sources and eye witness accounts from the war and from the homes from the civil war. This book reminds me of many books that I liked to read of the i chose series when you chose the paths but you got to see the results of your choices by seeing images and texts from people or witnesses from the accident or adventure. I would recommend this book to people that like to learn about historical events that had happened in our American ancestors life back then.

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

These short snippets written by soldiers and civilians on both sides of the American Civil War show that the people that fought in it kept their hopes and dreams alive while they witnessed horrible carnage with many of their comrades and opponents turned into amorphous masses of discontinuous protoplasm. As is generally the case in civil wars, there really is not that much difference between the common soldiers doing the fighting and dying on both sides.
There is a great deal of valuable context to the snippets written in italicized script that explains some of the background needed to understand what is being referenced by the authors of the associated short statements. Without this text, many of the snippets would not be understood by people not well grounded in history.
People that understand what came later in the First World War will know that there were clear lessons regarding the future of warfare to be learned from the American Civil War. Those lessons are present in this text. The main weapons on both sides were muzzle loading muskets and yet one side charging the other’s prepared positions rarely succeeded. Even when it did success was due to overwhelming numbers and led to horrific casualties among the attacking forces.
This is personal history as well as a macro history of a war like so many others. The side that declared the war for some stated reasons ended up losing those reasons when it was over.

[Veronica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good for a very general overview of anecdotal stories of and pertaining to the American Civil War. Not a deep dive kind of book, but based on many first-hand accounts.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Voices from the Civil War is a collection of first-account stories from many of the major events that occurred during the Civil War, from before it began to Reconstruction.
I enjoyed this book a lot more than I thought I would. I'm generally not much of a nonfiction person, but I found this book to be interesting and engaging. Some of the stories were sweet others made me feel sick. Overall, I felt that this book gave a great overview of the war told by those that lived through it.