? Huddersfield Town Hall: Huddersfield Military Society meeting on Wednesday, 7.30pm with John Spencer on Johnny Reb and
Billy Yank, soldiers of the American Civil War MUSIC?
His views had in part been shaped by popular histories like Alexander Hunter's 1905 novel Johnny Reb and
Billy Yank, which tells the story from the point of view of the average soldier.
A professionally trained historian with a doctorate from Yale, Wiley (1906-80) later wrote a companion volume, The Life of
Billy Yank (1952), which is substantively a better book.
Army Quartermaster Corps issued rations of "coffee essence," a goop of concentrated coffee, sugar and milk, to which all
Billy Yank need do was to add a spoonful to a cup of water to make "instant coffee." What it made was instant dissolved goop.
Bobbs-Merrill, 1943 and The Life of
Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union.
Thus, if captured again by
Billy Yank, they faced the death penalty.
Veterans returning from the war wrote their memoirs well into the early twentieth century when Bell Wiley's landmark studies, The Life of
Billy Yank and The Life of Johnny Reb, appeared.
But, as Wiley concluded, "the similarities of
Billy Yank and Johnny Reb far outweighed their differences.
431; Bell Irvin Wiley, "
Billy Yank and Abraham Lincoln," Abraham Lincoln Quarterly 6 (1950): 103-20.
He won Grammys for "The Battle of New Orleans," "Wilderness Road," "Songs of
Billy Yank and Johnny Reb" and "Tennessee Stud," which was a big hit for Eddy Arnold.
Proving the latter, which impressed even bookish boys who excelled studying history, was the fact that it took more than twice as many
Billy Yanks to beat Johnny Reb--and four years to do it.