When George Kimball (1840–1916) joined the 12th Massachusetts in 1861, he’d been within the newspaper alternate for 5 years. while he mustered out 3 years later, having been wounded  at Fredericksburg and back at Gettysburg (mortally, it was once mistakenly assumed on the time), he lower back to newspaper existence. There he remained, operating for the Boston Journal for the subsequent 4 a long time. A usual storyteller, Kimball wrote frequently approximately his army carrier, consistently with a newspaperman’s eye for aspect and recognize for the proof, bearing on purely what he’d witnessed firsthand and recalled with amazing readability. amassed in A Corporal’s Story, Kimball’s writings shape a distinct narrative of 1 man’s adventure within the Civil struggle, considered via a standpoint stronger by means of time and reflection.

With the 12th Massachusetts, Kimball observed motion at a few of the most crucial and ferocious battles within the japanese theater of the conflict, corresponding to moment Bull Run, Antietam, Gettysburg, the barren region, Spotsylvania, and Petersburg—engagements he vividly renders from the infantry soldier’s standpoint. acutely aware that his readers is probably not acquainted with what he and comrades had passed through, he additionally describes many points of military existence, from the main mundane to the main dramatic. In his debts of the determined motion and speedy horrors of conflict, Kimball sincerely conveys to readers the price of retaining the Union. by no means vindictive towards Confederates, he embodies as an alternative the overdue nineteenth-century’s spirit of reconciliation.

Editors Alan D. Gaff and Donald H. Gaff have additional an creation and explanatory notes, in addition to maps and illustrations, to supply additional context and readability, making George Kimball’s memoir probably the most whole and fascinating money owed of what it used to be to struggle within the Civil War—and what that have gave the look of during the lens of time.