ARMY LIFE OF AN ILLINOIS SOLDIER
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From a callow youth who joined the Union Army because, as he put it, it 'beats clerkin'" (Willa 1996 vii), Charles Wills eventually rose in the ranks from recruit to commanding officer. He was not a typical "farm boy" but had gone to the university. Nevertheless, as one can see, he had promised to defend the Union, but he was ambivalent at best about the issue of slavery. War is Hell, General Sherman was supposed to have said. In these pages, we discover the individual torment of war, how it affected the soldiers, as well as the enemy and the civilians they met along the way. In general, this book proves that war is a hellish way to mature. What must be understood, throughout the book, is that many of Wills' comrades, as well as most other Union soldiers, had no idea about the significance of the war, or the reasons the South was fighting the North. For the most part, all they knew was that the South had seceded, made the U.S. weaker, and divided the nation as nothing or no one had before. As the foreword states: "He (Wills) had gone to war solely to preserve the Unioną" (p. ix) In the end, as a commissioned officer, he had come to realize that his duty included doing whatever was necessary to enforce the Emancipation proclamation and therefore fight for the Negroes to survive as citizens, not slaves. At the beginning, the army seemed boring and uneventful, according to Wills' correspondence: ""I haven't written for a full weekąAlthou
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rustration been as deep, nor the struggle so important in the overall scheme of civilization, as the actions and feelings described by Wills.
War often turns basically honorable and upstanding men into something else. Wills condemns his own Union fellow solders as much as the enemy: "This little squad of 500 men in the two months they have been mounted have committed more devilment than two divisions of regular cavalry could in five years. Everything you can think of from shooting five Negroesąto snatching a brass ring off the finger of the woman who handed a drink of water." (p. 209)
Still Wills finds time to see the beauty of nature and the countryside. There is a humanity in him that no amount of fighting or waiting to march and fight can dislodge. For example, in the spring of 1864, he writes: "Spring is here at lastąIn the valleys the poplars, the beeches, and the black gums are nearly in full spring dress, being far in advance of their comrades- the oaks, chestnuts, hickories and white gum.." (p. 225) There is time for observation of the rituals of nature that no man made destruction can seemingly alter.
At the same time, Wills becomes hardened to the enemy- even the civilians. He is disdainful of the wome
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Approximate Word count = 1346
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
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