Silent cavalry : how Union soldiers from Alabama helped Sherman burn Atlanta, and then got written out of history

When this book wound up on my TBR list, I took the front cover at face value that I was getting a history of the 1st Alabama Cavalry, USA, and how it became an embarrassment to "right-thinking" Alabamians post-Reconstruction.

What I got was the memoir of Howell Raines, and how being a descendant of pro-Union men impacted his personal outlook. Some of that would have been fine, but this is not a well-organized book, and reading it reminded me of some of the more tedious researchers I dealt with when I was a reference specialist at the U.S. National Archives; generally well-meaning folks with a bad case of tunnel vision.

If you're more interested in the foundations of the "Southern" mentality, you'll probably get more out of this than I did.

A political book in which the author felt compelled to expose readers to the coverup of the role some citizens of Alabama had in serving in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

I found the book to be a tedious read.

The author admits to writing as a journalist and not as a trained historian.

The book contains a helpful index.