Reviews for The last full measure

The average rating for The last full measure based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-11-07 00:00:00 Mitchell Blount Since I’ve left Minnesota for the corn-studded paradise known to Nebraskans as Nebraska, and to the rest of America as that place somewhere in the middle where everyone wears red and cares too much about college football, I have come to have a great appreciation for my home state and its rich past. Sure, Nebraska has a fine history, if you care to poke around. At the far western end, there is Fort Robinson, where the last free bands of free Indians surrendered what remained of their broken cultures; in the middle, there is the Kearney Arch, near the remains of Old Fort Kearny, an early outpost along the Oregon Trail (but don’t confuse it with the more famous Fort Phil Kearny in Wyoming, location of the Fetterman Massacre); and on the eastern border, along the muddy Missouri, there is Omaha, onetime hotbed of the emo music scene, and still the home of Warren Buffet and the College World Series. Really, it’s great. Just great. Oh, who am I kidding? For a person who rates geographic locations in terms of historical sites (and yes, I am the life of every party), Nebraska does not compare to Minnesota. You can paddle a canoe along the routes of the voyageurs; you can climb old lighthouses and descend abandoned iron-ore mines; you can visit the site of one of the deadliest fires in US history, or stop by the Metrodome to witness firsthand the disasters befalling the Vikings; you can eat rock candy and watch old-timey blacksmiths at Fort Snelling; and you can spend a day following the trail of the Sioux Uprising of 1862, from the Upper Sioux Agency to Fort Ridgely to New Ulm. In terms of Minnesota’s legacy, though, one event has always stood out, above all others, and it didn’t even take place within her borders. Rather, it occurred along a creek bed in Pennsylvania, near the college town of Gettysburg. On July 2, 1862, on the second day of the greatest battle ever fought on the American continent, the Union Army was positioned along a line of hills and ridges, which formed the shape of a fishhook. On the left flank, along a low ridge, a political general named Dan Sickles found himself unable to leave well enough alone. Seeing higher ground in front of him, he led his corps forward from their position in the line. This placed Sickles' men way out in front of the rest of the Union Army. This movement, undertaken without orders or foresight, caused a salient, or bulge, in the Union lines, and left both Sickles’ flanks dangerously exposed. The Confederates, seeing this, pressed their attack on Sickles, and sent his men fleeing. A gap opened up in the Union line. Seeing this, General Winfield Scott Hancock plugged the hole with the only available material at hand: 262 men of the First Minnesota Regiment of Volunteers. Hancock ordered the First Minnesota to undertake a bayonet charge, right into the teeth of an oncoming Confederate brigade. The intent was to slow the Rebel advance, and buy a few minutes for Hancock to stitch his lines back together. So, 262 men ran down a gently-sloping ridge, took cover along Plum Run, and stalled the attack; only about 30% of those men were able to walk away. This valiant charge is memorialized by a painting that hangs in the State Capitol, as well as by a striking monument on the fields of Gettysburg, that shows a soldier running towards an imaginary enemy, a bayonet poised at the tip of his charged rifle. Despite the contemporary fame of that charge, however, its memory has faded. No one visits the State Capitol, and the Minnesota monument at Gettysburg gets lost among a thousand other statues. When the Regiment’s story is told, it usually only garners a paragraph or two (if only Michael Shaara had chosen to write about the First Minnesota, instead of the Twentieth Maine…). Time has leeched the immediacy, the poignancy, of their sacrifice. If you want to know the story in full, however, there is Richard Moe’s The Last Full Measure: The Life and Death of the First Minnesota Volunteers. It is a regimental history, that begins with its mustering-in at Fort Snelling, shortly after the Confederates shelled Fort Sumter, and ends with its mustering-out at Fort Snelling, shortly after it was mauled at Gettysburg. Twelve hundred men went off to war; 325 came home unhurt. Two hundred men of the Regiment were killed outright; some 500 were wounded. Before its rendezvous with destiny in the shadow of Cemetery Ridge, the First Minnesota proved to be one of the crack regiments in the Army of the Potomac. It fought extremely well at Bull Run and during the Peninsula Campaign, and was fortuitously spared disaster at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. It gained a measure of immortality at Gettysburg for its gallant rush, but also played an important role on July 3 in helping to repel Pickett’s Charge. The Last Full Measure is a soldier’s-eye view of the Civil War. There is very little space devoted to the broader context of the war. The maps that are included are next to worthless, and show only the general position of the Regiment on the field of battle. This is a notable shortcoming, yet in a way, somewhat appropriate; you know as much about what’s going on as the soldiers in the Regiment knew. As an author, Moe never establishes much of a voice. The great bulk of this book is comprised of the writings of the soldiers themselves: letters, diaries, and articles written for hometown newspapers (the Regiment included several talented warrior-correspondents). Thankfully for the reader, these men had abundant literary talents, to go along with their courage. They wrote with a keen eye for detail, and often commented on their present circumstances with a mordant wit. Some of the most enjoyable portions of the book took place far away from the fields of battle, where you read about the life of a soldier in camp: their battles with boredom; their various shenanigans; and their utter ingenuity in matters of keeping warm, cooking food, and procuring liquor. The uncontested stars of The Last Full Measure are the brothers Isaac and Henry Taylor. While some of the diarists and letter writers slip in and out of the story, the Taylors provide a consistent presence, and become the only characters that we get to know with any true depth. Their odyssey, including their palpable affection for each other, provides the human thread that ties the First Minnesota’s story together. The dramatic peak of the First Minnesota’s story is, of course, its Gettysburg apotheosis. Bull Run and Antietam and camp life are all well and good, but it is all buildup to those shattering few minutes on July 2: With bayonets fixed, officers and men were running downhill in a line extending nearly one hundred yards from end to end, although to call the incline a hill would be to exaggerate. It was an ever so gradual slope extending two hundred yards across two fields to the swale at the bottom, now heavy with smoke from Confederate firing. “In a moment,” according to Lochren, the regiment was “sweeping down the slope directly upon the enemy’s centre.” The full force of Gen. Cadmus Wilcox’s brigade of nearly 1,600 Alabamans was now focused on the 262 advancing Minnesotans, and artillery shelling combined with accurate musketry to deadly effect. “Bullets whistled past us,” Carpenter said, “shells screeched over us; canister and grape fell about us; comrade after comrade dropped from the ranks; but on the line went. No one took a second look at his fallen companion. We had no time to weep.” In an epilogue, Moe follows the postwar lives of the First Minnesota survivors. Most of them lived solid, unremarkable lives, forever shadowed by those freighted moments when, in the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, their “hearts were touched with fire.” For obvious reasons, nothing they did later could ever hope to equal their charge into Wilcox’s Brigade. While they lived, they were exalted, and it is gratifying to know that these guys never had to buy themselves another drink. When I was a kid, I used to believe that the First Minnesota had saved the world. If it wasn’t for them, I thought, the Confederates would have smashed the Union lines; rolled up both flanks; marched on Washington; won the Civil War; destroyed the Union; and allowed Adolf Hitler free reign in Europe. Obviously, none of that is likely. Wilcox’s assault on Cemetery Ridge took place as night was falling. Even had he pierced Hancock’s lines, it is doubtful he would have had the time or support to properly press his advantage. Though the First Minnesota was once loftily eulogized by generals, politicians, and presidents, it is probably more accurate to remember them as an elite group of fighting men who stepped into a breech and helped secure an important Union victory. It should not diminish their accomplishment to acknowledge that the fate of the known world did not rest on their shoulders. The men of the First Minnesota have earned their immortality for the reason that, when called upon to march into certain death, they not only went, but they ran.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-03-04 00:00:00 Sean Hare I was really disappointed with this book, especially having read John Quinn Imholte's, "The First Volunteers" which was published by Ross & Haines in 1963. What Moe essentially did was steal all of Imholte's sources and rewrote the material. There was very little in the way of new sources and in certain areas he didn't go into depth enough like Imholte did. Furthermore, the Minnesota Historical Society holds collections from other 1st Minnesota soldiers who shed further light to the day-to-day activities and battles of the regiment, and none of these additional sources were explored. If I were a college teacher and read Imholte's book, I would give Moe an "F" for plagerism.