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ARMY LIFE OF AN ILLINOIS SOLDIER

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 Unionà" (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 weekàAlthough soldier is a hugely lazy life, yet these short days we seem to have little spare time." (p.38) But, when Wills and his troop encountered fighting, he had to report that Two men killed on the plank road, two more woundedà" (p. 77)

If war changes people, Wills' letters certainly prove that. "For myself, I know it's a huge thing we have on our heads, but I believe I'd rather see the whole country red with blood, and ruined together than have this 7,000,000 of invalids (these...

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ARMY LIFE OF AN ILLINOIS SOLDIER. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 07:39, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1706022.html