History of the Twelfth West Virginia Volunteer Infantry The Part It Took in the War of the Rebellion, 1861-1865 — Reading Companion

A Compilation Built on Memory and Gaps

Hewitt’s preface is unusually transparent about the book’s limitations. He notes that he inserted cards in newspapers and wrote letters to solicit incidents, but that “where there is failure to make mention of incidents worthy of record … it is because they were not known, or are not remembered.” This admission shapes the entire work: the history is not a seamless official record but a patchwork of recollections, some generous, some missing. The dedication “To the Surviving Comrades and the Families of the Fallen” further underscores that the intended audience is the regiment itself, not a broad public. Readers should expect a text that values personal anecdote over strategic overview, and that openly grapples with the fallibility of memory.

The Battle of New Market: Defense of Sigel and a Humorous Aside

The excerpts from the New Market engagement reveal two distinct authorial impulses. First, Hewitt mounts a pointed defense of General Sigel, quoting Halleck’s dismissive telegram—“Sigel is in full retreat … he will do nothing but run”—and countering that Sigel “acted bravely” and that his entire command would testify to his courage. This is a rare moment of explicit argument, suggesting that Hewitt saw his history partly as a corrective to official narratives. Second, he includes a comic anecdote about Colonel Wells of the Thirty-fourth Massachusetts, whose repeated order “Orderly, orderly go and ascertain who fired that gun” became a running joke among the men. The juxtaposition of battlefield critique with barracks humor is characteristic of Hewitt’s method: he moves from tactical analysis to soldierly jest without transition, treating both as equally valid parts of the regiment’s experience.

Scouting, Disobedience, and the Texture of Camp Life

Hewitt’s account of a volunteer scouting mission after New Market illustrates how the history captures informal dynamics. Corporal De Bee and six to eight men are ordered by Sigel to don civilian clothes and infiltrate the enemy camp. The men silently decide to “forego that pleasure” and instead reconnoiter in uniform, counting tents from a hillside. When they return, they are arrested by pickets who do not recognize them. Sigel later praises them above the cavalry. The episode is told with dry understatement—the men’s unspoken refusal to wear civilian clothes, the irony of being arrested by their own side—and it reveals how Hewitt privileges the soldiers’ perspective over strict obedience. Such vignettes, scattered through the text, give the history a ground-level texture that official reports lack.

Hewitt’s history is best approached as a veteran’s conversation with his comrades, not as a comprehensive operational record. The catalog subjects—regimental history, West Virginia’s role—are accurate but incomplete: the book’s value lies in its candid acknowledgment of memory’s limits and its inclusion of humor and dissent alongside battle accounts. Readers interested in the Civil War’s human dimensions will find more here than in a dry tactical summary, but they should also expect gaps and a partisan defense of the regiment’s reputation.