FOREWORD

During the early months of this year Mrs. Louise Quarks Lewis, State
Historian of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Maryland Division,
asked me to suggest a research topic which might employ the historical
talent and Confederate zeal of the U. D. C. and at the same time add
something to the stock of useful records at the Maryland Hall of Records.
This combination of purposes must have produced valuable fruit in any
case, but at precisely the moment that this request was made to me the
staff of the Hall of Records was taking counsel about how we might
answer queries concerning the service records of Marylanders who served
with their brothers of the South in those tragic years of the War between
the States.

It will perhaps come as a shock to some that such information has
not always been readily available but it is no less the truth for that. The
records of a defeated cause seem to its adherents to have lost all value—
this is especially true at the very moment of defeat and consequently at the
last moment when all of the records may be expected to be intact—and
to its enemies to be, at best, objects of no moment and, at worst, symbols
of a hated and stubborn foe. The tragedies which befell the records of
the South are too well known to bear repetition here. As time his passed
and bitterness has subsided on both sides, the government at Washington
has repaired a good deal of the damage which was done in those days,
and the States of the Confederacy through official agencies and also through
various patriotic groups have begun—but in most cases not finished—the
task of putting into convenient form the service records of their own
sons who fought in the war.

The case of Maryland was different. It was not until 1896 that an
effort was made to publish the names of Maryland veterans of the Union
Armies. Money was appropriated at that time by the Legislature for this
purpose and the fruit was a two-volume work called History and Roster
of Maryland Volunteers, War of 1862-5. Unfortunately, these volumes
were never indexed, and it was not until several years ago, when a card
index was prepared by the Hall of Records, that it was possible to find the
service record of any individual if the organization in which he served was
not known in advance. Even now, however, this work is not perfect, for
the first volume is devoted to veterans of the Union Army who served in
Maryland organizations while the second volume, containing marines, sailors