Author(s): George W Buswell (Author), Jonathan W. White (Editor), Reagan Connelly (Editor), Gary W. Gallagher (Foreword)
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Publication Date: April 9, 2025
Language: English
Print length: 288 pages
ISBN-10: 0813952778
ISBN-13: 9780813952772
Book Description
The remarkable account of a Union soldier whose service took him from Indian Country to the heart of the Confederacy
CWBA Top Ten Book of the Year, 2025
In the summer of 1862, young Minnesotan George W. Buswell enlisted in the Union army, but his marching orders did not take him to the South to fight the Confederacy, as he had hoped, but to the US-Dakota War. Until the end of 1863, Buswell served with the 7th Minnesota Infantry, witnessing and describing that war’s infamous final act: the hanging of thirty-eight Dakota men at Mankato, the largest officially sanctioned mass execution in American history. Afterward, he volunteered as an officer to lead the 68th US Colored Infantry, serving in the Civil War’s Western Theater and seeing action in Mississippi.
Buswell’s unique diaries―published here for the first time―offer an extraordinary record of his unusually wide-ranging experience, taking readers through the Dakota War, into Union prisons in St. Louis and Memphis, onto picket lines where he searched Confederate women suspected of smuggling, and into the ranks of a Black regiment that fought against Confederate forces led by Nathan Bedford Forrest. His eyewitness accounts represent a vital contribution to the ongoing debate over the parameters of the American Civil War.
Editorial Reviews
Review
If you are looking to read a Civil War diary far different from those commonly published by popular and academic presses, yet no less engaging and informative than those, this is the one for you. . . The variety of wartime opponents and sheer breadth of fronts faced by Buswell during his long 1862-66 army service are highly remarkable, perhaps even unique, among Civil War diarists. Expertly framed and edited by Jonathan White and Reagan Connelly, the Buswell diary contained in From Dakota to Dixie is an extraordinary reading experience. Highly recommended.―Civil War Books and Authors
White and Connelly have done an excellent job of making Buswell’s diary an engaging and useful resource, that’s well worth the reader’s time.
―Emerging Civil War
Review
George W. Buswell had an extraordinary Civil War experience – made more extraordinary by the fact it has taken this long for his compelling wartime diary to be published. As a member of the 7th Minnesota Infantry, he fought the Dakota Sioux before turning south to face Confederate foes, eventually serving as an officer for the 68th regiment of United States Colored Troops. Lucid and thoughtful, Buswell’s account, which Jonathan W. White and Reagan Connelly have edited with great care, will doubtless prove an essential resource for expanding our understanding of a defining moment in American history.―Cecily N. Zander, Texas Woman’s University, author of The Army under Fire: The Politics of Antimilitarism in the Civil War Era
About the Author
Jonathan W. White is Professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University and the author of A House Built by Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House. Reagan Connelly graduated from Christopher Newport University and is a J.D. candidate at George Mason Antonin Scalia Law School.
Wow! eBook
