With Fire and Sword

My assignment last week for the online book proposal class I’m taking was to create a comparable titles section, listing half a dozen books that share some similarities to mine but are also different (this is to help demonstrate that there’s a market for a book on a particular topic). Needless to say, the bookshelves are not overflowing with popular titles about historic bands – Oprah has not yet given her stamp of approval to such a book – so finding comparable titles posed a bit of a challenge.

The exercise led me to a couple of interesting Minnesota history books that I would like to read, and through the search process, I also stumbled across an incredible account of the Civil War called With Fire and Sword by S.H.M. Byers.

I recognized the name Byers immediately because I had mentioned him in a blog post back in October 2010 (Vicksburg is the Key – Part 2: Iowa and G. Oliver).

Maj. Samuel Hawkins Marshall Byers served in the Fifth Iowa Infantry, fought at Vicksburg, was taken prisoner at the Battle of Chattanooga, and was held as a prisoner of war at five different prison camps, including Andersonville. He later became famous for writing the poem “Sherman’s March to the Sea,” which he composed while in prison, and the official state song, “Song of Iowa.”

Byers died in 1933 at age 95.

Byers returned to the South in November 1906 with a delegation of Iowa veterans and officials who dedicated battlefield monuments to Iowa soldiers at Shiloh, Vicksburg, Andersonville and Chattanooga – a delegation that included G. Oliver Riggs, who was invited to play cornet with the 51st Iowa Regimental Band, directed by his friend George Landers (G. Oliver’s father, Jasper Riggs, fought with the 45th Illinois Infantry in some of the same places Byers fought).

Byers kept a daily diary during his four years of war experiences, and he incorporates vivid details and descriptions into this engaging tale of his adventures, including his interactions with Generals Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman. It’s difficult to summarize the book because it contains so many incredible and poignant moments. As it says in the preface, “The book is not a history of great army movements, it is simply a true tale of the thrilling experiences of a subordinate soldier in the midst of great events.”

With Fire and Sword was published in 1911 and was out-of-print, but it’s in the public domain now, so thanks to the wonders of modern technology, you can read it online or even buy a new paperback copy through BibiloBazaar, an imprint of historical reprints publisher BiblioLife.

I don’t imagine Byers had to send a comparative titles list to his publisher to convince them of the need for his story; even today, with all that’s been written about the Civil War, books continue to be published on the topic, and authors continue to find new things to say about it.

My book, which seeks to tell the true tale of the incredible experiences of the St. Cloud boys’ band, does not share much in common with With Fire and Sword, but I am hopeful that it also will make for compelling reading decades after its publication.