Regimental History of the 8th Pennsylvania Reserve Infantry

Silas Baily, Colonel and later Brigadier General,
Commander of the 8th Pennsylvania Reserves




Robert E. Eberly, Jr. Bouquets from the Cannon’s Mouth: Soldiering with the Eighth Regiment of the Pennsylvania Reserves. White Mane Books: Shippensburg, PA, 2005, 372 pp. (ISBN 1-57249-373-9)

The 8th Pennsylvania Reserve Infantry was one of the regiments attached to the Pennsylvania Reserves Division, commanded at the Battle of Fredericksburg by Major General George Gordon Meade, which served as part of the Army of the Potomac. From the Seven Days Battles in 1862 through Grant’s Overland Campaign in 1864, the 8th Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Reserves Division fought in nearly every major campaign in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War. The regiment, along with the division, suffered heavy losses at Gaines Mill, Antietam, and Fredericksburg, where the Pennsylvania Reserves achieved one of the only Union successes by establishing a breach in a portion of the Confederate right flank. The reserves were unsupported in this effort, however, and the division was driven back with severe losses, including the capture of William Silveus, whose letters home to his wife, Mary, are included in an earlier post. The author of this book, drawing on letters, diaries, and other personal accounts, does a very creditable job of bringing the history of this regiment to life. Composed of infantry companies recruited in western Pennsylvania, the battle record of the 8th Pennsylvania Reserve Infantry has received little scholarly attention in the past. Focusing on the letters and diaries of five western Pennsylvanians who served with the 8th Pennsylvania Reserves, Eberly has done much to rectify this matter. Of particular interest are the two prisoner of war diaries incorporated by Eberly in the third part of the book. These two accounts of life in rebel prisons have never been published before. Containing ten maps, six appendices, several photographs, extensive notes, and a complete bibliography, this is a wonderful scholarly work. Eberly sheds a great deal of light on the service of the Pennsylvania Reserves, and this book, as Civil War historian Edwin C. Bearss states in his foreword, is for those “who savor the soldier’s story.”