This work presents an ambitious German commander's views of military life and courtship in the Confederacy. Confederate colonel Frank Schaller lived a life of grand ambition, driven to attain rank, fortune, a good marriage, and some measure of redemption in the eyes of his German family. His correspondence from the 1860s follows his battlefield experiences, his machinations for advancement, and his courtship of Sophie Sosnowski of Columbia, South Carolina. Schaller emigrated from Germany to the U.S. in 1855 and began the career as a military science instructor that would lead him to North Carolina and the Hillsborough Military Academy in 1861. His training in Germany and his combat experience with the French army in the Crimean War made him a candidate for quick advancement once the Civil War began. From the time of North Carolina's secession in 1861 until his being wounded at Shiloh in April 1862, Schaller advanced rapidly from lieutenant to colonel. But after Shiloh his consistent - and somewhat conspicuous - medical complaints kept him from combat while he worked to maintain his rank as regimental commander of the Twenty-second Mississippi Infantry and pursue a marriage into a prominent family. Schaller reveals much in his correspondence about military actions and the inner workings of the Confederate officer corps. The critical views of this disciplined European military commander on the quality and training of his American volunteer soldiers is particularly telling. He recounts his firsthand perspectives on the Battle of Shiloh, the retreat from Nashville, the Battle of Fredericksburg, and the defeat at Gettysburg. His letters to Sophie Sosnowski also detail the nature of courtship practices in the war-torn South.
