The Last Full Measure: The Life and Death of the First ... (ISBN 0873514068)

Our Pride!:
Devotion to history isn't as strong in the Upper Midwest as in the Old South. Perhaps oblivion is nobler and less risky than living out a myth, but there are few if any "re-enactors" among my Swedish kinfolk in the Land of Lakes. Of course, the earliest settlers in my clan came to Minnesota in 1872. The Minnesota First Volunteer Regiment, nevertheless, has a good claim on being the most heroic single regiment on either side in the whole war, and Mr Moe documents the history of their heroism most eloquently. Another review complains that Moe use too many quotes, to much primary source material. I totally disagree. The use of letters, journals, and bits from local newspapers is the strength of this book, the part that carries both conviction and immediacy. Comparison to the Ken Burns TV documentary is apt, and I feel that this book, The Last Full Measure, is stronger both in impact and in scholarship. We're modest, diffident people, we Minnesotans. You won't find many statues of soldiers in our town squares. Truth is, we don't have so many town squares to show them off in. Kids plow through elementary school in Minnesota thinking of the Civil War as a faraway conflict hardly more intimate to us than the Boer War. I remember being surprised, in college, to learn that there'd been a Souix War in my birth-county, in the 1860s. History was what happened in other places. I wonder... Is our blissful ignorance a handicap or the source of our comparatively lawful and peaceful community? Our grudges stay at home. Anyhow, as we say in Freeborn County, this here tale of young men fighting for what they care about makes pretty good reading.

Great regimental history:
Few Union Civil War regiments did more for the Union cause then the First Minnesota. The case could even be made, on a man by man basis, that the sacrifices these men made, culminating in the enormous losses the regiment suffered at Gettysburg, exceeded that of any other unit on the Union side. Yet for many years this gallant regiment was relatively unknown, at least until this excellent regimental history was published. Minnesota native Richard Moe does justice to this great unit by portraying the men just as they were--brave, stalwart, yet human underneath it all. The tenacity these men showed in battle is evident from the first time they saw real combat against the Stonewall brigade at First Manasses, and is demonstrated over and over throughout Moe's work. One of the great challenges in writing combat history lies in doing justice to the battle narrative without coming across as over-dramatic in the telling. Moe does an excellent job of relating the combat experiences of the First Minnesota, with his telling of the First's participation in the battle of Gettysburg being very moving and some of the best combat narrative I believe I've ever read. In those few pages alone Moe accomplishes his objective--to make the reader appreciate the part these great men played in the war--and even without the rest of the book I believe his point would be made. This is a regimental history, of course, so the focus is on the First Minnesota rather than the actions of the Army of the Potomac in general. There are parts of the narrative, such as when the regiment is guarding Harper's Ferry, when relatively little happens, yet such is the nature of a unit history such as this one. I think a full appreciation of this book requires some knowledge of the first three years of the Civil War, but Moe provides enough detail that one could probably get a general idea of what was going on elsewhere in the war even without it.

In-depth coverage of the finest Union regiment of the Civil War:
While the gallant charge of the 1st Minnesota on July 2, which saved the Union cause was well known to me, the rest of the illustrious history of the first volunteer Union regiment, from First Manassas to The Wilderness, was not. To read the homely accounts of these citizen soldiers helps you to understand how the Army of the Potomac, despite a succession of inept commanders, ultimately prevailed. A must for serious Civil War buffs.

A Moving Story of Courage, Heroism and Tragedy. A Truly Great American Story:
For Minnesota's Sesquicentennial on March 11, 2008, the Minnesota History Center created the acclaimed MN150 exhibit of 150 people, places and things that shaped Minnesota, chosen from over 2,700 citizen nominations received over several months. They put much time and money into developing the exhibit. It opened at the History Center in October of 2007 and will be open for probably five years. (Check out the MN150 website for more interesting reading.) I nominated the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment with a brief essay I wrote, inspired by reading the Pulitzer Prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States) by James McPherson and my own casual research as a history buff. (I did not yet know about this excellent book.) My nomination won, and the First Minnesota is included in the exhibit of 150 most important people, places and things in Minnesota history. Their story is amazing. A brief essay cannot do justice to the First Minnesota, because their accomplishments span several years, but here is my winning essay: The First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment was the first in the nation to answer President Abraham Lincoln's call for troops in 1861, and they courageously served with great distinction. The 262 men of the First Minnesota played a heroic but tragic role at the Battle of Gettysburg. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, James McPherson wrote, "The 20th Maine and the 1st Minnesota achieved lasting fame by throwing back Confederate attacks that came dangerously close to breakthroughs. . . . The Minnesotans did the job, but only 47 of them came back." The day was July 2, 1863. More than 160,000 Union (North against slavery) and Confederate (South favoring slavery) soldiers converged at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Confederate forces had achieved a series of victories and may have advanced to Washington, D.C., if they won this battle. The men of the First Minnesota were positioned near Union artillery batteries on Cemetery Ridge. "We began to hear musketry which soon became one continuous roar. . . . Then shells fell uncomfortably near us," wrote Sergeant Alfred Carpenter in a letter on file with the Minnesota Historical Society. Then disaster struck. Confederate Rebels infiltrated the Union line. "The Rebs came in two splendid lines, firing as they advanced, capturing one of our batteries, which they turned against us, and gained the cover of the ravine," Carpenter wrote. "The plain was strewed with dead and dying men." Union general Winfield Scott Hancock desperately ordered the 262 men of the First Minnesota to charge the 1,600 advancing Alabama Rebels. Carpenter recalled, "We advanced down the slope. . . . Comrade after comrade dropped from the ranks; but the line went. No one took a second look at his fallen companion. We had no time to weep." The next day, 15,000 Confederates charged Cemetery Ridge--the legendary Pickett's Charge--but were repelled by a devastating artillery barrage. Because the Minnesotans had saved the artillery the day before, the Rebels were repelled--but at a great sacrifice. 82 percent of the First Minnesota men were killed or wounded at Gettysburg--the highest casualty rate of the war. On July 4, Lieutenant William Lochren wrote a letter to his hometown Winona Republican newspaper. "We are in the midst of a terrible battle," he wrote. "Two thirds of the regiment are killed or wounded. We got the better of the enemy in the fight, and our regiment captured one stand of colors." The Union and Confederacy suffered 45,000 casualties at Gettysburg. Over 620,000 soldiers died in the Civil War. On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln honored the great sacrifices made and gave meaning to the war in his Gettysburg Address: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. . . . From these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. . . ." And so we did. Some historians call the Civil War "the Second American Revolution." Following the Union victory, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments were ratified, transforming the Constitution and America. The importance that Minnesotans attributed to the Civil War can be seen in the numerous great paintings of the Civil War at the Minnesota State Capitol, including Rufus F. Zogbaum's Battle of Gettysburg. The Civil War deeply shaped the new state of Minnesota, and the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment played a pivotal role.

Too much quotation:
The research and flow of the book is good, but there's too much quotation from the primary sources. It's great to see the perspective of the regiment's men, but the use is excessive. This has a tendency to make the book a bit tedious at times. More analysis from the author would have been helpful. Nontheless, a noble effort to tell an important story.