Johnny Green of the Orphan Brigade: the Journal of a Confederate Soldier

Military Review, May-June, 2004 by D. Jonathan White

JOHNNY GREEN OF THE ORPHAN BRIGADE: The Journal of a Confederate Soldier, Albert. D. Kirwan, ed., University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, 2002, 272 pages, $22.00.

University Press of Kentucky has reissued Johnny Green of the Orphan Brigade: The Journal of a Confederate Soldier, which is a personal memoir of a Kentucky Confederate soldier. Green, who enlisted early, joined the 9th Kentucky Infantry, served throughout the war in the West, and became a sergeant major. After the war, Green rewrote his wartime journal for his family but never intended to publish the book. His narrative exhibits tell-tale signs of post-war reworking such as mixing the present and past tenses.

A common soldier from a state that never seceded, Green was a volunteer. His experiences were not unusual, but the value of his reminiscences comes precisely from their commonness. To a certain extent, Green was a Confederate "everyman." He describes his motivation for fighting as defending the cause of a constitutional government, denouncing Northern coercion as sinful. Whether these characterizations are Green's or postwar editing is not clear. Overall, the book is poignant, revealing, and sometimes, humorous.

LTC D. Jonathan White, USA, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas