The Mystery of "Field and Fireside"

I came across an 1873 review of a play, Field and Fireside, described as an original American society comedy. According to the Nov. 18, 1873, edition of the San Francisco Bulletin, "The drama is a portrayal of some of the incidents of the rebellion, and is full of the exciting scenes of war and the quiet, happy scenes of peace; scenes of love and hatred, of sorrow and shame, of friendship and treachery. It presents the comic and the serious side of life; its fantasies and its realities."

Characters include Captain Airey, a patriotic Union officer, his love interest, Delia Derrick, her father, the unscrupulous "Old Derrick," the lovesick war correspondent "Merrygrave," and the exaggerated Englishman, Lieutenant-Colonel Fitz Roy Bull, of the Royal Fusileers. Eliza the maid and servants "Wash" and "John" are also in the cast.

I've found little else about this play other than a few newspapers ads dated 1873 and 1874. One of them notes the play was written by Williams. My working theory is that this is Dr. John B. Williams. His obituary from the Oct. 15, 1878, New York Herald:

JOHN B. WILLIAMS, M.D.
Dr. John B. Williams died at his residence, No. 252 Fifth avenue, Brooklyn, on Sunday evening, October 13. He was born in Cambridge, England; studied medicine in London and Paris, and after completing his professional education came to this country about twenty-five years ago. In 1856 he started the Family Journal in Baltimore. It was the first story and sketch paper ever published in the South and had a large circulation. The war ut a stop to this enterprise, and the Doctor became connected with various family papers at the North and gained reputation as a writer. He was a man of fine literary taste, general ability and attractive social qualities. His age was fifty-two years and he leaves a wife and two sons.

If you have any knowledge about Field and Fireside, I want to hear from you! I am particularly interested in learning if a copy of the play is in existence.

Book Review: A Deeper Look at the Confederate Soldier

"Faces of the Confederacy is an indispensable new window on the Civil War and the society that fought it," writes Dr. John L.S. Daley in a review of my book that has just appeared in the Civil War Book Review by the Louisiana State University Libraries' Special Collections.

Daley, an associate professor of history and chair of the Department of History at Pittsburg State University in southeastern Kansas, mentioned a number of details that other reviewers passed by, including this opening line: "Consciously taking cues from Thomas Macaulay and Thomas Carlyle, Ronald S. Coddington has presented history as a sum of individual experiences in this collection of seventy-seven short biographies of Confederate soldiers..."

Daley compares the book to Bell J. Wiley's classic, The Life of Johnny Reb (1962), and adds a paragraph that accurately reflects my research: "The Internet and Interlibrary Loan have allowed Coddington to tread where Wiley and other predecessors could not. While awaiting responses to his Civil War Message Board Portal and GenForum.com queries, he mined Ancestry.com, digitized Library of Congress records and pension files in state archives. On-site research in the Library of Congress and National Archives turned up service records, as did the Southern Historical Society Papers, newspapers and regimental histories. Even with internet help, it took him an average of two months to piece together each life.

I am particularly pleased with this review. You can read the complete version on my web site, or view the original on the Civil War Book Review.

New Confederate Faces Review

The Faces of the Confederacy review by C.D. Myers of McClatchy-Tribune News Service begins with the story of Capt. Jesse Cunningham McNeill, the soldier who transforms from petulant subordinate officer to daring raider responsible for the capture of a pair of federal generals.

It is fitting that Myers led with McNeill's story, for it exemplifies the many untold and largely forgotten stories of the Civil War period.

Myers adds:

This exceptional companion edition to Coddington's 2004 book, "Faces of the Civil War: An Album of Union Soldiers and Their Stories," reconstructs the lives of 77 Confederate soldiers below the rank of colonel, through engaging narratives complemented by rare carte-de-visite (CDV) portrait photographs.

This review has been widely published online, including the Kansas City Star and The (Columbia, S.C.) State.

MI Publishes Confederate Faces Review

Military Images publisher David Neville reviewed Faces of the Confederacy in the latest issue of the magazine (May/June 2008). This excerpt captures the essence of his words:

"These stories are not the often told ones of famous Confederate leaders like General Lee, Stonewall Jackson, or J.E.B. Stuart, but of enlisted men and lower ranking officers, whose life stories deserve to be heard by this generation of American history and Civil War readers."

The complete comments are available in the Confederate Reviews section of my web site.

Civil War Times Review

The June 2009 issue of Civil War Times Magazine includes a review of Faces of the Confederacy. Of particular interest is Jack Trammell's focus on the importance of the soldier cartes de visite, which is unusual, as most reviewers emphasize the stories of the volunteers. The review concludes with Trammell recognizing the combination of photographs and stories:

"Coddington's book reminds us that the face of war never really changes, and that conflict never comes at a convenient moment for anyone."

Thanks to my friend Alan Rudolph, who alerted me to the review's publication in CWT.

Extended Version of the AJC Review

Writer Bill Hendrick informs me that an extended version of the review that originally appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has been published on the Georgia Online News Service. The article includes more details and quotes.

Gray Faces of War Reviewed in AJC

"Gray faces of war" is the headline of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution review of Faces of the Confederacy, which appeared today in print and online.

"Coddington’s prose is as unpretentious as the faces he shares, yet authoritative. It resurrects details that broaden our understanding of those sad times and sheds valuable light on the shape of modern culture," writes Bill Hendrick, a longtime AJC staff member who left the company last year. Bill interviewed me for this review, and also spoke with David Wynn Vaughan of Atlanta, one of the collectors whose contribution made this book come into its own.

I like this quote for two reasons. I write in a clear, direct style and try to use first-person narrative to advance the soldier's story. I also refrain from injecting my own point of view, for it is the soldier's story, not my own. I also stay away from generalization unless it helps put the soldier's experience into greater context or bring additional meaning to the story.

Also, Bill's reference to the Civil War period's influence on the shape of modern culture is spot on. Anything contemporary writers of history can do to convey the confusion and chaos of those times can only benefit those who continue on the American journey. Our story is one of shades of gray. As time marches on and memories fade and disappear, the subtle shades are reduced to a stark contrast of black and white. Lost is the complex and complicated tangle of cultural and political issues at the core of the wars, economic crisis, scientific milestones and other watershed events that make their way into our history books.

I first met Bill Hendrick twenty-three years ago at the AJC. Our careers overlapped in the late eighties: He had by then established a reputation as one of America's top business writers, having predicted the 1987 stock market crash; I was a rookie staff artist who had joined the company shortly before the first Apple computer landed in the department.

Bill descends from a Virginia family whose sons fought for the Confederacy.

ACRL Reviews Confederate Faces

George Eberhart of the Association of College & Research Libraries recently reviewed Confederate Faces. He writes:

"Faces of the Confederacy: An Album of Southern Soldiers and Their Stories, by Ronald S. Coddington (320 pages, December 2008), brings to life the fragmented backgrounds of 82 Confederate soldiers pictured on cartes de visite of the 1860s. Coddington has hit upon a unique and fascinating niche in the seemingly endless march of Civil War books. This one is a sequel to his Faces of the Civil War (2004), which matched the images of ordinary Union privates, sergeants, lieutenants, and captains with brief memoirs of their war experiences. With Southern veterans the documentary trail is much harder to pick up, making the author's biographical vignettes all the more extraordinary. The earnestness, defiance, and desperation on the faces of these men resonates with a modern audience, once their stories are known."