Book Review: Memoirs of a Swiss Officer in the American Civil War

Authors

Michael Perman

Keywords

American Civil War, Swiss Officers, book review

Abstract

Three Years in the Army of the Potomac is the title of Rudolf Aschmann's 1865 memoir of his lengthy service in the First U.S. Sharpshooter Regiment and it has been translated from the German for the first time in Heinz Meier's edition. Its appearance in English after so long a period of obscurity (Bruce Catton does not even list it in his bibliography for the Potomac trilogy) will not provoke any interpretative reassessment of the military history of the American Civil War; it does not even contribute data previously unknown. But that does not matter; the account is nonetheless very insightful and, to a great extent, unusual.

Recommended Citation

Perman, Michael (1972) "Book Review: Memoirs of a Swiss Officer in the American Civil War," Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter: Vol. 8: Iss. 3, Article 6.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_newsletter/vol8/iss3/6