>> for more information, visit the author's website at andrew graybill.com. >> during booktv's recent trip to chattanooga, tennessee, we took a tour of the papers of john t. wilder, who relocated to the south after killing an officer in the civil war. >> we are on the second floor of the library. this is a collection we acquired around 1960. she donated his military documents that her father wrote to their mother in the water. after the war there were a lot of union officers who moved from chattanooga to the midwest.

he became a prominent businessman and an industrialist throughout the south and he opened a series of mines into north carolina and he was an entrepreneur in nt open up several hotels. he was always working with moneymaking opportunities in the and would stay with them for two or three years and he was also the mayor of chattanooga in 1870 and he was sort of a prominent citizen. so i think it is appropriate that we get this collection of letters that he wrote to his wife. one thing i find interesting is that a lot of these letters started off by asking a person why haven't you written more and they're like we haven't received a letter from you and complaining about that.

but i think during the civil war they were particular about writing about this in their letters and these give a lot of information about what they are doing what they are planning to do and there is a lot of information about the missions of these troops went on and the skirmishes and the battle. i find one very interesting, he missed out on the battle of shiloh by about a day late. but he rides home on april 16 from the battlefield as he rides onto the battlefield that shiloh just a day after the battle and says that i will not attempt to tell you of the awful deception of the battleground which covered a space of about 25 square miles. on every acre of it in here.

and probably about 2000 in all dead. gun carriages torn to bits, dead horses and mangled bodies. all combined to make up a picture of horror that it would be well for internal political leaders that they did not learn. and he was one of the first officers on either side and that gave them a big advantage that most of the soldiers used and they fired up to seven shots versus the shoot and reload and we really gained gain an upper hand on confederate troops during the war. and so there was a great deal of division and because of that

they began part of the brigade. all the men carried hatchets out of necessity. and he also is very influential with was just across the border in one of the last lead them into the battlefield and he helped general george tomas and after the battle in the late summer of 1863 he was pretty much done with the war. he went home and he was pretty sick and went home for the remainder of the year and he was rejoined in early 1864 and about halfway through the water he was

pretty much done. then he did receive a promotion through the general at that time. but most of what he accomplished he did as a colonel. in this letter he writes in kentucky and january 18, 1862, he writes that, my dear wife. i have not right into you for a long time because i've been sick with pneumonia. i expect by monday to resume work. no prospects for an advance on the enemy. our men are sick and this is the unhealthiest chance i have ever seen. and so you see a soldier and an officer writing home during the war and it was a war that he enlisted in and it's such a good

historical account and the triumphs of a hat. but it was a hard life and a lot of people don't realize that there are casualties in this award and they certainly experienced the bat. and he writes periodically through the war that he's not doing well and at one point they had to carry him by ambulance. and it's obvious and some of these when he was in the middle he was able to service men and then he collapsed and he was taken to the hospital. and one thing that i think is very significant is in the fall of 1862 when he was home in indiana, he was taking the troops back to the battlefield

in which a little town in western kentucky because the confederate general was heading north and he was to go there and wait for the u.n. and they were going to do a pretty big battle. and he went up there with a couple of hundred troops and not completely surrounded him an army of about 50,000. he held them off for several days and eventually negotiated a surrender and i don't know if this has ever been done in warfare before, but he went in under a private troop camp and he understood an officer was this gentleman. and i'm sure he played something to the effect that i am not militarily trained in what should an officer do in this situation when he's pretty much told not to surrender.

and can i see proof that your army is as big and there is an officer said this is not how it should work. and he said said that i took an instant liking to this man and they gave him a two or of the confederate army and saw that he was outnumbered and they negotiated a surrender and then he was sent home. and like i said earlier he was paroled and sent home in about two or three months later the union army came back in