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August Valentine Kautz, USA: Biography of a Civil War General

by Lawrence G. Kautz, McFarland & Company

Although he was born in Inspringen, Baden, in 1828, August Valentine Kautz’s family brought him to Ohio when he was still an infant. A far cry from the German immigrants who elicited ethnic disdain from their Union Army comrades, Kautz was a Mexican War veteran, a subsequent graduate of the U.S. Military Academy and a participant in the Rogue River War in the Pacific Northwest before he made his mark in the Civil War.

In August Valentine Kautz, USA, descendant and retired North Carolina physician Lawrence G. Kautz provides the first comprehensive biography of the general, addressing some of the more controversial actions—including the 1864 Wilson-Kautz Raid—that may have unfairly tainted the record of a man regarded by troops in the field as a cool military professional.

 

Originally published in the February 2009 issue of Civil War Times. To subscribe, click here