Congratulations to Meg Groeling!

Editor’s note: Emerging Civil War refrains from reviewing books written by “one of our own,” but we definitely take pride in announcing their publication. So our Book Review Editor, Stephen Davis, has prepared this announcement of Meg Groeling’s new First Fallen: The Life of Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, the North’s First Civil War Hero.

Everyone knows about Elmer Ellsworth. Growing up as a young Civil Warrior, I was transfixed when LIFE Magazine in January 1861 ran Bruce Catton’s article, “Gallant Men in Deeds of Glory,” especially with Stanley Meltzoff’s painting of James Jackson, proprietor of the Marshall House in Alexandria, firing his shotgun into Ellsworth’s chest as he descended the stairs, having taken down the hotel’s Stars and Bars (Corporal Brownell tried to fend him off with his musket). 

So it gives us particular satisfaction in announcing the publication by Savas Beatie of Meg Groeling’s long-awaited biography of this early Northern martyr.

Meg’s first book, The Aftermath of Battle: The Burial of the Civil War Dead appeared in 2015. (Ellsworth is buried in Hudson View Cemetery, New York.) The Civil War community has been eagerly anticipating Meg’s biography, which is sure to tower over earlier studies published in 1960 and 2015.

Ms. Groeling, a resident of Hollister CA, has been working on Colonel Ellsworth for years. Passion for her subject shows throughout, and we congratulate Meg on this lifetime achievement.

–S.D.