Book Review: When Paper Collar Bandbox Soldiers Fight: A History of the 4th Regiment West Virginia Volunteer Infantry
When Paper Collar Bandbox Soldiers Fight: A History of the 4th Regiment West Virginia Volunteer Infantry. By Philip Hatfield, Ph.D. & Terry Lowry. Charleston, WV: 35th Star Publishing, 2024. Softcover, 435 pp. $29.95.
Reviewed by Jon-Erik Gilot
Civil War enthusiasts will often find that some of the most notable regiments started their service with inauspicious beginnings. For example, before their courageous attack on Fort Wagner, the famed 54th Massachusetts endured grueling manual labor details. And Duryée’s Zouaves languished for months on early-war railroad guard duty. The 4th West Virginia Infantry, the most traveled regiment fielded from West Virginia, also experienced a humble start. Veteran historians Philip Hatfield and Terry Lowry explore this regiment’s story in a new volume, When Paper Collar Bandbox Soldiers Fight: A History of the 4th Regiment West Virginia Volunteer Infantry.
Like many of the West Virginia regiments raised along the state’s western border, the 4th was comprised of many Ohioans, as well as recruits from several central and southwestern counties in present-day West Virginia. Under the capable leadership of Col. (later Brig. Gen.) Joseph A. J. Lightburn, the regiment whiled away their early service on uneventful guard and scout duties in western Virginia. The authors take the reader through the forgotten skirmishes and scouting expeditions from the summer of 1861 and 1862 that served to hone the regiment for more active field service to come.
In January 1863, the 4th West Virginia received orders to go west to bolster Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the Tennessee during the Vicksburg Campaign, thus becoming the only West Virginia regiment to fight in both the eastern and western theaters of the war. The western troops jeered the West Virginians as “paper collars” and “bandbox soldiers,” though the mountaineers soon earned the admiration of the veterans, distinguishing themselves in the attacks on Stockade Redan at Vicksburg on May 19 and 22, 1863. While suffering 223 casualties, the regiment also boasted six Medal of Honor recipients during the “Forlorn Hope” attack at Stockade Redan.
The 4th remained in the western theater long enough to participate in the battle of Missionary Ridge before transferring back to the Department of West Virginia in the spring of 1864, though a handful of non-veteran mountaineers were assigned to the 8th Missouri Infantry to complete their term of service in the west. The regiment was active in the Shenandoah Valley, participating in battles at Cool Spring, Second Kernstown, Third Winchester, and Cedar Creek before being consolidated into the 2nd West Virginia Veteran Infantry in late 1864 and mustered out in July 1865.
The authors mine an impressive number of sources to develop the story of the 4th West Virginia, allowing the men of the regiment to tell their own story through letters, memoirs, and pension records. Curiously, however, many of the sources found in the notes are not represented in the bibliography. While running over 400 pages, the book includes only six chapters, with several surpassing 75 pages. A few brief chapters at the conclusion highlight some anecdotal stories and curiosities of the regiment, while another explores the regimental monument at Vicksburg National Military Park.
As readers of Terry Lowry’s many fine West Virginia histories have come to expect, wartime and postwar photographs of the regiment’s officers, enlisted men, and artifacts from public and private collections, richly illustrate the volume. Lowry, a descendant of several veterans of the 4th West Virginia, lent photos from his personal collection. Numerous historic maps as well as six modern maps from Edward Alexander help to place the regiment on several battlefields, while an appendix of company rosters helps to trace names across regiment.
Like many recent releases from 35th Star Publishing, When Paper Collar Bandbox Soldiers Fight fills a noticeable void in West Virginia’s Civil War historiography by offering readers a modern history of one of the state’s most hard-fought regiments.
This was primarily an Ohio regiment. Whitelaw Reid stated in “Ohio in the War : Her Statesmen, Her Generals, and Soldiers”, pg. 919—“This regiment, although mustered into the service as a Virginia organization, was recruited mainly in Ohio. Seven full companies of it were recruited in the counties of Meigs, Gallia, Lawrence, and Athens. These numbered some six hundred men. Portions of the remaining companies were also interspersed with Ohioans.” When the regiment was asked to vote on the Willey Amendment in March 1863, with nearly 1000 men present, only 200 votes were cast, and that is probably a good indication of the number of actual West Virginians in the regiment. The regiment’s memorial association was formed in Ohio, not WV. As one recruiter in Ohio wrote in 1862 “Several companies have been formed in this county to go into Virginia regiments, and by this means not only our county but the State deprived of the credit of so many more volunteers on the rolls. It is high time this should cease.”