author
J. Newton (John Newton) Terrill
A Civil War veteran who turned firsthand experience into a detailed regimental history, writing with the perspective of someone who marched and fought alongside the men he described. His surviving work offers a direct, ground-level view of the Union army in some of the war’s best-known campaigns.
1 Audiobook
Campaign of the Fourteenth Regiment New Jersey Volunteers
by J. Newton (John Newton) Terrill
About the author
Born on July 10, 1842, John Newton Terrill served in Company K of the 14th New Jersey Volunteers during the American Civil War. Sources consistently identify him as a veteran of that regiment, and his best-known book, Campaign of the Fourteenth Regiment New Jersey Volunteers, grew out of his own service and close knowledge of the unit.
Terrill began writing that history soon after the war; library records for the book note that he started it in September 1865 and finished it in July 1866. The book follows the regiment through major campaigns of the Army of the Potomac, including the Maryland Campaign, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor, giving readers a soldier’s-eye account rather than a distant overview.
He died on February 20, 1916. While biographical details about his wider life are limited in the sources available here, his reputation endures through this vivid memoir-like regimental history, which remains of interest to readers of Civil War literature and military history.