Synopses & Reviews
Prussian-born cartographer Oscar Hinrichs was a key member of Stonewall Jackson's staff, collaborated on maps with Jedediah Hotchkiss, and worked alongside such prominent Confederate leaders as Joe Johnston, Richard H. Anderson, and Jubal Early. Hinrichs's detailed wartime journals, published here for the first time, shed new light on mapmaking as a tool of war, illuminate Jackson's notoriously superior strategic and tactical use of terrain, and offer unique perspectives on the lives of common soldiers, staff officers, and commanders in Lee's army. Impressively comprehensive, Hinrichs's writings constitute a valuable and revelatory primary source from the Civil War era.
Review
"Oscar Hinrichs served through much of the Civil War in staff billets that placed him in intimate proximity to some of the most important and renowned Southern leaders in the Virginia theater--among them, Stonewall Jackson. Thus situated, Hinrichs witnessed and participated in campaigns of high profile and described them colorfully and at length. This book's annotations go well beyond an acceptable level of thoroughness, and the primary original narrative itself resulted from a wonderful degree of diligence--pursuing its stray fragments, in two languages, and knitting them together into a connected whole. The result makes an impressive document that seems destined to become a substantial piece of literature in its field, read and cited steadily far into the future."--Robert K. Krick, author of
Stonewall Jackson at Cedar Mountain
About the Author
Richard Brady Williams is an independent historian based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He is author of Chicago's Battery Boys: The Chicago Mercantile Battery in the Civil War's Western Theater.