John A. (John Alexander) Sloan

Born in 1839 and associated with Greensboro, North Carolina, he served with the Guilford Grays, later Company B of the 27th North Carolina Regiment. Archival notes from Greensboro history collections identify him as the son of Robert Moderwell Sloan and say he became commanding officer of the Guilford Grays.

His writing grew directly out of that service. Reminiscences of the Guilford Grays, Co. B., 27th N.C. Regiment recounts the regiment's wartime experience in a personal, ground-level voice, and North Carolina in the War Between the States expands that effort into a broader historical narrative focused on North Carolina soldiers in the Civil War.

He died in 1886, but his books remain useful to readers interested in Civil War memory, regimental history, and North Carolina's part in the conflict. Rather than writing from a distance, he wrote as someone who had been there, which gives his work much of its lasting interest.