Four Years in the Stonewall Brigade
John O. Casler
New Introduction by Robert K. Krick
From his looting of farmhouses during the Gettysburg campaign and robbing of
fallen Union soldiers as opportunity allowed to his five arrests for infractions of
military discipline and numerous unapproved leaves, John O. Casler’s actions
during the Civil War made him as much a rogue as a Rebel. Though he was no
model soldier, his forthright confessions of his service years in the Army of
Northern Virginia stand among the most sought after and cited accounts by a
Confederate soldier. First published in 1893 and significantly revised and
expanded in 1906, Casler’s Four Years in the Stonewall Brigade recounts the
truths of camp life, marches, and combat. Moreover, Casler’s recollections
provide an unapologetic view of the effects of the harsh life in Stonewall’s
ranks on an average foot soldier and his fellows.
A native of Gainesboro, Virginia, with an inherent wanderlust and thirst for
adventure, Casler enlisted in June 1861 in what became Company A, 33rd
Virginia Infantry, and participated in major campaigns throughout the conflict,
including Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. Captured in February 1865, he spent
the final months of the war as a prisoner at Fort McHenry, Maryland. His postwar narrative recalls the realities of warfare for the private soldier, the moral
ambiguities of thievery and survival at the front, and the deliberate cruelties of
capture and imprisonment with the vivid detail, straightforward candor, and
irreverent flair for storytelling that have earned Four Years in the Stonewall
Brigade its place in the first rank of primary literature of the Confederacy.
This edition features a new introduction by Robert K. Krick chronicling
Casler’s origins and his careers after the war as a writer and organizer of
Confederate veterans groups.
Robert K. Krick was for thirty years
the chief historian at Virginia’s
Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania
National Military Park. He is the author
or editor of numerous books, including
Stonewall Jackson at Cedar Mountain
and The Smoothbore Volley That
Doomed the Confederacy.
American Civil War Classics • Gary W. Gallagher and Robert K. Krick, series editors
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