Content area
Full Text
The Civil War Diary of Father James Sheeran: Confederate Chaplain and Redemptorist Ed. by Patrick J. Hayes, Catholic University of America Press, 2017, 605 pp., ISBN 978-0-8132-2882-2, $29.95 (paper).
James Sheeran (1817-1881) was a widowed father of two when he followed his religious vocation by joining the Redemptorist order in 1855 and receiving ordination as a priest three years later. He was serving at St. Alphonsus, a Redemptorist parish in New Orleans, when the Civil War began and became chaplain for the 14th Louisiana Infantry Regiment in October 1861. Sheeran subsequently followed his regiment throughout the eastern theater as part of the Army...