Corporal's Story
Regular price
€28.50
1861
Antietam
Boston Journal
Category=DNBH
Category=DNXM
Category=NHK
Civil War
Confederates
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eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Fredericksburg
George Kimball
Gettysburg
infantry soldier
military service
newspaper trade
Petersburg
Second Bull Run
Sportsylvania
the Wilderness
Twelfth Massachusetts
Union
Product details
- ISBN 9780806196923
- Weight: 660g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 31 Mar 2026
- Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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When George Kimball (1840–1916) joined the Twelfth Massachusetts in 1861, he’d been in the newspaper trade for five years. When he mustered out three years later, having been wounded at Fredericksburg and again at Gettysburg (mortally, it was mistakenly assumed at the time), he returned to newspaper life. There he remained, working for the Boston Journal for the next four decades. A natural storyteller, Kimball wrote often about his military service, always with a newspaperman’s eye for detail and respect for the facts, relating only what he’d witnessed firsthand and recalled with remarkable clarity. Collected in A Corporal’s Story, Kimball’s writings form a unique narrative of one man’s experience in the Civil War, viewed through a perspective enhanced by time and reflection.
With the Twelfth Massachusetts, Kimball saw action at many of the most critical and ferocious battles in the eastern theater of the war, such as Second Bull Run, Antietam, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Petersburg—engagements he vividly renders from the infantry soldier’s point of view. Aware that his readers might not be familiar with what he and comrades had gone through, he also describes many aspects of army life, from the most mundane to the most dramatic. In his accounts of the desperate action and immediate horrors of war, Kimball clearly conveys to readers the cost of preserving the Union. Never vindictive toward Confederates, he embodies instead the late nineteenth-century’s spirit of reconciliation.
Editors Alan D. Gaff and Donald H. Gaff have added an introduction and explanatory notes, as well as maps and illustrations, to provide further context and clarity, making George Kimball’s memoir one of the most complete and interesting accounts of what it was to fight in the Civil War—and what that experience looked like through the lens of time.
With the Twelfth Massachusetts, Kimball saw action at many of the most critical and ferocious battles in the eastern theater of the war, such as Second Bull Run, Antietam, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Petersburg—engagements he vividly renders from the infantry soldier’s point of view. Aware that his readers might not be familiar with what he and comrades had gone through, he also describes many aspects of army life, from the most mundane to the most dramatic. In his accounts of the desperate action and immediate horrors of war, Kimball clearly conveys to readers the cost of preserving the Union. Never vindictive toward Confederates, he embodies instead the late nineteenth-century’s spirit of reconciliation.
Editors Alan D. Gaff and Donald H. Gaff have added an introduction and explanatory notes, as well as maps and illustrations, to provide further context and clarity, making George Kimball’s memoir one of the most complete and interesting accounts of what it was to fight in the Civil War—and what that experience looked like through the lens of time.
Alan D. Gaff is an independent scholar and the author of several books, including the bestselling Lou Gehrig: The Lost Memoir, Baseball's First Superstar; The Lost Life Story of Christy Mathewson; Field of Corpses: Arthur St. Clair and the Death of an American Army; Blood in the Argonne: The "Lost Battalion" in World War I and Scalp Hunter: Major Robert Rogers and his Rogue Rangers.
