Research Catalog

Valleys of the shadow : the memoir of Confederate Captain Reuben G. Clark, Company I, 59th Tennessee Mounted Infantry

Title: Valleys of the shadow : the memoir of Confederate Captain Reuben G. Clark, Company I, 59th Tennessee Mounted Infantry / edited, with commentary and regimental history, by Willene B. Clark.
Author: Clark, Reuben G. (Reuben Grove), 1833-1900.
Publication: Knoxville : University of Tennessee Press, ©1994.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Use in library	E615 .C57 1994	Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Clark, Willene B.

Description

xxxi, 163 pages : illustrations, maps; 24 cm.

Summary

Valleys of the Shadow is the previously unpublished account of Captain Reuben Clark's first-hand experiences as a Confederate officer, a prisoner of war, and a postwar civilian living in a conquered state.
Captain Clark was a twenty-seven-year-old Knoxville businessman when the first shots of the Civil War were fired in 1861. Like many southern gentlemen Clark was opposed to secession but could not desert his family and friends. Although he enlisted as a lieutenant in the Confederacy's Third Tennessee Infantry Regiment, he spent most of his service in the Fifty-ninth Tennessee Mounted Infantry.
Clark first experienced war when he arrived at Manassas just after the battle, spending his first night as a soldier among the dead and dying. His recollections of these horrors and of the battles and skirmishes that followed provide a wealth of previously undocumented information about his regiment's activities.
They also offer valuable analyses of battles from a participant's point of view and discuss the irony many soldiers felt when combat pitted them against men they had known before the war in business, politics, and society.
Captured after the battle of Morristown in the fall of 1864, Clark was jailed in Knoxville, then under Federal control. His account of the eight months he spent as a prisoner - his harsh treatment, a near-fatal illness, the false accusations of traitorous activities - offer a detailed description of the physical and legal battles of a Confederate prisoner of war fighting to obtain his freedom.
Clark's postwar experiences relate his struggles as a former Rebel living in a conquered state, reflecting the deeply divided loyalties of East Tennessee that continued for years after the war's end. This first book in a new series entitled Voices of the Civil War presents the story of a man who remained aware of his kinship with those he was forced to call his enemies. Written a quarter-century after the war began, Clark's memories vividly bring to life the tragedy that was the Civil War.

Series Statement

Voices of the Civil War series

Uniform Title

Voices of the Civil War series.

Subject

Genre/Form

autobiographies (literary works)
Autobiographies
Biographies
History
Personal narratives
Personal narratives – Confederate
Autobiographies.
Personal narratives.
Récits personnels.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (p. [151]-158) and index.

ISBN

0870498193
9780870498190
0870498207
9780870498206

LCCN

93028758

OCLC

ocm28583231
28583231
SCSB-2021472

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library