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AMERICAN The Civil War Diary ofFather James Sheeran, Confederate Chaplain and Redemptorist. Edited by Patrick Hayes. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press. 2017. Pp. xii, 596. $29.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-813-228822.)
This Civil War diary of a Confederate chaplain in the Army of Northern Virginia, Father James Sheeran, C.Ss.R., is an important and invaluable primary source. Father Sheeran penned this 1656-page handwritten account of his travels, trials, and travails while serving as a Catholic chaplain from 1862 to 1865. He witnessed numerous battles, including Second Bull Run, Antietam, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and the bloody encounters of the Wilderness campaign in 1864. An observer, albeit from a safe distance, however he witnessed the brutality of battle and the horrific suffering of the wounded.
He was born in County Longford, Ireland; two sources list the year of birth as 1819 but they cannot agree on the day. Sometime in the 1830s, he migrated to New York City, where he married his wife Margaret. The couple...