ARMY LIFE OF AN ILLINOIS SOLDIER

As the foreword states: "He (Wills) had gone to war solely to preserve the Unionà" (p. ix) 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. As one reads the pages from the initial boredom to the final disturbed and even disgusted feelings that Wills had about the reasons for the war, the behavior of the Rebel soldiers and the civilians (especially the women) abandoned by their men gone off to fight for the Confederacy, one can easily see why the divisions that were responsible for the war and for generations afterwards were sop deep.

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

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lian volunteers, not army men, and not used to military discipline> "Volunteers steeped in a militia tradition found it hard to accept that they could not freely come and goà..The wear spirit had not died; rather, the men followed a local kind of patriotism in keeping with the militia tradition rooted in American life since the colonial era." (Blair 36) If there is one thing to be gathered from the opposing points of view of Willis' and Blair's books it is the fact that both sides stemmed from the same colonial roots. But, those roots split off, one growing in a slave-owning, rural South where sensibilities were different and slave owning was not so much a "social" activity, as a means to survive. On the other hand, the industrialized North seemed to have a different standard of individuality and responsibility to family and society. Yet, this was one nation, now divided in spirit, with Americans fighting Americans, and both sides believing that they represented the true spirit of America. It is an argument that, to this day, is not truly and totally solved. It is sad to report, in reading both these books, that Man tends to lose his basic instincts of honor and justice. War often turns basically honorable and upstand
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Some common words found in the essay are:
North South, Willis' Blair's, Southern Illinois, Hell Sherman, War North's, Civil War, Grandest Army, War Wills, Sherman Wills, War Blair, union soldiers, rebel soldiers, preserve union, militia tradition, wounds death, war blair, friends wounded, university press, hatred enemy, civil war,
Approximate Word count = 2250
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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