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Civil War Regimental Histories Publication Tabulation

Written on:March 22, 2011
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In 1964 Stephen Z. Starr published his interesting short study “The Grand Old Regiment” that dealt exclusively with the historiography of the Civil War regimental history. If you’re serious about being a Civil War Soldier Studies historian than you need to read Starr’s excellent essay on the average regimental history as he offers some very interesting data. One aspect of Starr’s research that fascinated me was the data he collected on “tabulation of publication dates” for those regimental histories. Starr took 9 states and 220 regimental histories and presented the following data:

Date Range _ Number of Publications
——————————–
to – 1869 _ 39
1870 – 1879 _ 14
1880 – 1889 _ 32
1890 – 1899 _ 59
1900 – 1909 _ 52
1910 – 1919 _ 23
1920 – 1925 _ 3

In honor of the Civil War Sesquicentennial I did my own research only I did it on 13 states and 360 regimental histories. Here were my results:

Date Range _ Number of Publications
——————————–
to – 1869 _ 50
1870 – 1879 _ 30
1880 – 1889 _ 78
1890 – 1899 _ 98
1900 – 1909 _ 70
1910 – 1919 _ 31
1920 – 1925 _ 3

Data Source: http://www.loc.gov/rr/main/uscivilwar/

Though I included states Starr did not (New York and Massachusetts), and though I covered over 130 more regimental histories, the data seems to come to the same conclusions: In the 1880s, about the time Grant’s Memoirs were published, there was a reawakening of interest in the Civil War. The 1890s and early 1900s was the height of this interest movement in Civil War studies.

Have placed the data in a spreadsheet and am playing around with it, will see if there is something else that I am missing in there?

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