Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. [Vol. 3.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 23)

STUDIES - M. Thomas Inge: Sam Watkins and the Fictionality of Fact

writers want local color and memorable first-hand comments by a literate witness, they turn to Watkins. Every segment of the recent PBS television series by Ken Burns, The Civil War (1990), included quotations from Watkins's comments and observations (the published text by Geoffrey C. Ward includes over twenty), and the multi-volume Time-life series, The Civil War, quoted from him over a dozen times.

3 It is, indeed, not the history but the quotability and engaging personality of Sam Watkins that has kept his book in print since it first appeared down to today under the title of "Co. Aytch" Maury Crays, First Tennessee Regiment; or, A Side Show of the Big Show. First published serially in his hometown newspaper, the Columbia Herald, beginning May 13, 1881, and continuing through 1882, the columns were promptly collected and issued by the Cumberland Presbyterian Publishing House of Nashville in an edition of 2,000 in both hardcover and paper covers. The reputation of the book was so strong after the first edition was exhausted that in 1900 another edition of 2,000 copies was issued by the Chattanooga Times newspaper with a few minor changes. The demand for copies of "Co. Aytch" among collectors during the next half decade led to the publication of a facsimile reprint of the 1900 edition by the McCowatt-Mercer Press of Jackson, Tennessee, in 1952 with an introduction by Bell Irvin Wiley, an index, and illustrations drawn from photographic archives. A popular paperback edition appeared in 1962 in the Collier Books Civil War Classics series with an introduction by Roy P. Basler, and in 1982 a facsimile reprint of the first edition was issued by the Press of Morningside Bookshop in Dayton, Ohio, with an introduction by Lee A. Wallace, Jr., an index, and further contemporary photographs.

4 3 See Geoffrey C. Ward, The Civil War: An Illustrated History (New York: Knopf, 1990), and The Civil War, 28 vols. (Alexandria, Va

.: Time-Life Books. 1987). 4 "Co. Aytch,

" Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment; or, A Side Show of the Big Show, with an introduction by Lee A. Wallace, Jr. (Dayton, Ohio: Press of Morningside Bookshop, 1982). 48