
John Dooley's Civil War
An Irish American's Journey in the First Virginia Infantry Regiment
Robert Curran(Author)
University of Tennessee Press
Will be published approx. on 20. January 2011
Book
Hardback
277 pages
978-1-57233-822-7 (ISBN)
Description
Among the finer soldier-diarists of the Civil War, John Edward Dooley first came to the attention of readers when an edition of his wartime journal, edited by Joseph Durkin, was published in 1945. That book, John Dooley, Confederate Soldier, became a widely used resource for historians, who frequently tapped Dooley's vivid accounts of Second Bull Run, Antietam, and Gettysburg, where he was wounded during Pickett's Charge and subsequently captured. As it happens, the 1945 edition is actually a much-truncated version of Dooley's original journal that fails to capture the full scope of his wartime experience- the oscillating rhythm of life on the campaign trail, in camp, in Union prisons, and on parole. Nor does it recognize how Dooley, the son of a successful Irish-born Richmond businessman, used his reminiscences as a testament to the Lost Cause. John Dooley's Civil War gives us, for the first time, a comprehensive version of Dooley's ""war notes,"" which editor Robert Emmett Curran has reassembled from seven different manuscripts and meticulously annotated. The notes were created as diaries that recorded Dooley's service as an officer in the famed First Virginia Regiment along with his twenty months as a prisoner of war. After the war, they were expanded and recast years later as Dooley, then studying for the Catholic priesthood, reflected on the war and its aftermath. As Curran points out, Dooley's reworking of his writings was shaped in large part by his ethnic heritage and the connections he drew between the aspirations of the Irish and those of the white South. In addition to the war notes, the book includes a prewar essay that Dooley wrote in defense of secession and an extended poem he penned in 1870 on what he perceived as the evils of Reconstruction. The result is a remarkable picture not only of how one articulate southerner endured the hardships of war and imprisonment, but also of how he positioned his own experience within the tragic myth of valor, sacrifice, and crushed dreams of independence that former Confederates fashioned in the postwar era.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Chicago
United States
Edition type
Annotated edition
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
With dust jacket
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 163 mm
Thickness: 41 mm
Weight
885 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-57233-822-7 (9781572338227)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Robert Emmett Curran
John Dooley's Civil War
An Irish American's Journey in the First Virginia Infantry Regiment
E-Book
05/2026
1st Edition
University of Tennessee Press
€29.49
Available for download

Robert Emmett Curran
John Dooley's Civil War
An Irish American's Journey in the First Virginia Infantry Regiment
E-Book
01/2011
1st Edition
University of Tennessee Press
€46.49
Available for download
Person
. ROBERT EMMETT CURRAN is professor emeritus of history at Georgetown University. His books include Michael Augustine Corrigan and the Shaping of Conservative Catholicism in America, 1878-1902 and the three-volume History of Georgetown University.