Recollections of the Civil War With the Leaders at Washington and in the Field in the Sixties — Story, Setting & Ideas

Movement as Narrative Principle

The book’s structure depends on Dana’s constant travel between Washington and the field. He describes himself hurrying back to Chattanooga just in time to see the moonlight battle on Lookout Mountain, and later watching from Orchard Knob as troops marched across the valley “as regularly as if on parade.” These movements are not merely logistical; they organize the narrative into a series of vantage points. Dana’s position shifts from the War Department to Grant’s headquarters to the front lines, and each shift brings a new perspective on decision-making. The reader follows his itinerary, seeing battles as he saw them—from a distance, with the overall line of advance visible, but also with the immediate danger of shells bursting near his observation post.

Recurring Images of Light and Visibility

Dana repeatedly emphasizes what can be seen and how it is illuminated. The moonlight battle on Lookout Mountain is described with the “blaze of their camp fires and the flashes of their guns” making the position plain. Later, the assault on Missionary Ridge occurs on a “bright, sunny afternoon,” and the entire field is “spread out like a scene in a theater.” These visual details serve a dual purpose: they convey the spectacle of war, but they also underscore Dana’s role as an observer. He notes the range of enemy shells and the way they burst near his elevation, and he records the reactions of generals—Grant and Thomas remaining still while others duck. The emphasis on light and visibility turns the battlefield into a stage, with Dana as a spectator who is also a participant.

Command Dynamics and Informal Behavior

Dana’s account of the command at Orchard Knob reveals a tension between official decorum and individual impulse. He notes that Grant and Thomas would not “go down on their marrow bones” when shells came, while Granger, “boyishly intent upon firing his gun,” ignored his duties. Rawlins’s disgust at Granger’s “guerilla operations” leads Grant to order him elsewhere. These details show Dana’s interest in the human quirks of leadership. He does not simply record orders and outcomes; he watches how generals behave under pressure. The delay in transmitting Grant’s order is attributed to Granger’s distraction, a small failure with large consequences. Dana’s narrative thus weaves together the grand scale of battle with the small, telling moments of command.

The Spectacle of Assault and Its Aftermath

The assault on Missionary Ridge is presented as a visual spectacle: the troops move out at four o’clock, and Dana watches from Orchard Knob as they take the first rifle-pits and then continue up the ridge. He emphasizes the regularity of their advance, comparing it to a parade. Yet the aftermath is left uncertain—no report of the result is received that night, and only the next morning does he learn that Bragg evacuated Lookout Mountain. This gap between observation and knowledge is characteristic of Dana’s method. He reports what he saw and when he saw it, without filling in what he did not witness. The reader is left with the image of the advance, the waiting, and the delayed confirmation, a pattern that recurs throughout the memoir.

Dana’s Recollections rewards readers who attend to his precise notations of time, place, and visibility. The narrative is not a continuous history but a series of sharply observed scenes, each with its own light and movement. By following Dana’s itinerary—from Washington to Chattanooga to Orchard Knob—one gains a sense of how the war looked to a man who was neither a general nor a common soldier, but a civilian official embedded in the command structure.

Reading Dana’s account of generals and their fragile plans, I remembered my grandfather’s old copy of Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical Illustrating Principally the Revolutionary Period of Mecklenburg, Rowan, Lincoln and Adjoining Counties — Reading Notes, filled with margin notes in his thin pencil. Both books share that odd quiet—history held in someone’s hand, far from the noise of the fields they describe.