Keep Up Good Courage: A Yankee Family and the Civil War

FROM THE PUBLISHER:
Drawn from Corporal Lewis Quimby Smith’s 1864 diary, and letters from the Sandwich NH Historical Society, this unique title details both family life in Sandwich, plus the 14th Regiment of NH Volunteers’ experiences in Washington, New Orleans, on the Mississippi, in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, and Savannah, GA.

Rarely do both sides of a correspondence of this era survive the ravages of time and travel. This is a look at the struggles of the entire family, both on the battlefield and on the farm. Included are the battles of Third Winchester, Fisher’s Hill, and Cedar Creek in the fall Shenandoah Valley campaign. Dr. Houston’s painstaking research is completed with Civil War era images, and letters from other members of the 14^th Regiment.

After a number of reverses for the Union in 1861, the government recognized that the war would be prolonged. Consequently, President Lincoln called for three hundred thousand volunteers on July 1, 1862. The farming community of Sandwich, New Hampshire, sent slightly more than half of its three hundred and forty eligible men off to serve in the Civil War. Of these, eighty-five enlisted for three years in mid-August 1862, following the president’s July summons. The men from Sandwich, one of whom was thirty-year-old Lewis Quimby Smith, formed most of Company K of the Fourteenth Regiment of New Hampshire Volunteers. Lewis and his family corresponded dutifully and many of these letters survived.equaled -Lewis’s.

The catalyst for this project came with the discovery of Lewis’s 1864 pocket diary. His entries include the battles of Third Winchester, Fisher’s Hill, and Cedar Creek in the fall Shenandoah Valley campaign. In addition to the diary and the Smiths’ correspondence, an equal number of letters and a handful of other diaries from other writers in the regiment contribute to the record. Thus, Keep Up Good Courage, A Yankee Family and the Civil War, is the history of a soldier, his company and regiment, and his family, town, and state. It is a record not from the staff tent or the officer’s mess, but one from the ground up—three years as a soldier. 

BUY THE BOOK from the author

Keep Up Good Courage: A Yankee Family and the Civil War
The Correspondence of Cpl. Lewis Q. Smith, of Sandwich, New Hampshire, Fourteenth Regiment New Hampshire Volunteers, 1862-1865
By Alan Fraser Houston, MD
67 illus, cloth, 6" x 9"
$24.95, 351 pgs
• Primary sources from the 1860s
• Unique Civil War era images!

READER COMMENTS ON THE BOOK

"Houston deftly uses correspondence and diaries—written in quintessential Yankee prose—to transport the reader over 140 years back in time…
William P. Veillette, Executive Director, New Hampshire Historical Society

"Seldom are such collections edited with such comprehensive research and insightful analysis." 
William Marvel, Author, Andersonville: The Last Depot, & Mr. Lincoln Goes to War

"Houston, a stickler for accuracy, has retraced Smith’s fifteen thousand miles of travel, four sea voyages, and service in six Confederate states. Such painstaking dedication to Smith’s experience has produced an outstanding Civil War book."
Richard E. Winslow III, Author, "Constructing Munitions of War":
The Portsmouth Navy Yard Confronts the Confederacy, 1861-1865

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