Black Woman's Civil War Memoirs: Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33rd U.S Colored Troops, Late 1st South Carolina Volunteers Book

A fuller title of this book is
A Black Woman's Civil War: Reminiscences of my Life in Camp with the 33rd US Colored Troops, late SC Volunteers.
As Union troops moved from the North through the Upper South, Susie King Taylor (SKT) (Not yet married and not yet her name) became part of the mass of slave folk which was escaping slavery. The SC Volunteers/the 33rd US Colored Troops group of Union soldiers and their rescued slaves/Contraband made their way to the Outer Banks. barrier islands off the cost of North Carolina. The white Union officers in charge of these troops found out that SKT could read and write. So they put her in charge of teaching classes of children and adults. As the war progressed and the Union camp moved from one Outer Banks island to another, SKT became a nurse rather than a teacher. She was on the island that Fort Wagner was on.

(For those who have watched the movie Glory. Fort Wagner was the fort at the end of the movie where the Massachusetts 54th Infantry tries to take the Confederates.)

Due to SKT's skills, professionalism, and importance in changing and saving lives, SKT became a respected person who travelled through parts of US to give speeches.

Review of the text. The text is heavily edited, clear, concise. Notes at the back of each chapter largely explain what SKT did not name. Of course, SKT was a literacy teacher and war nurse, not a historian. And time fades memory. Fortunate for readers, historians have gone back into the text and added footnotes to provide names and context.

For those interested in filling out a bit of the context of the Massachusetts 54th at Fort Wagner, for those who want a little more context of behind the Union Lines on the Outer Banks, this memior will provide a more human rpbehind-the-lines perspective.