I was playing bar trivia last night and one of the questions was "what was the only book issued to all Confederate civil war officers"? The answer was reported as Les Miserables.
I did some research and learned that Les Miserables was very popular during the war, to the extent that Confederate soldiers sometimes referred to themselves as "Lee's Miserables.".
I found several sources repeating this: All of the officers in the Confederate army were given copies of Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo, to carry with them at all times. Robert E. Lee, among others, believed that the book symbolized their cause. Both revolts were defeated..
I have been unable to find any reliable, original or secondary sources to verify this information. It strikes me as unlikely, as I understand Lee wasn't a fan of novels, plus it seems like a huge waste of precious resources at a time when books weren't especially cheap.
Can someone help me with the answer? Thanks!
Edit: spelling
Unless this is a topic that has gone unreported in mainstream American historiography on the Civil War, I think you have to call B.S. on this. To issue a book, even in pamphlet form, to hundred of thousands of men would have been an insane undertaking, and if accomplished, would be something well-known today. The Confederacy had a difficult time adequately clothing and arming each of its soldiers, and even this was done in somewhat piecemeal fashion depending on the region (it isn't like there was some massive Confederacy hub where all war materiel came from). The process of distributing the books alone would have been a massive undertaking, let alone producing them all throughout the course of four years to get one in the hands of each soldier. And again, this never comes up in the histories or personal accounts (Arthur Freemantle and Confederate solider Sam Watkins never wrote about it at the time) that are available. While some units or even divisions might have had copies distributed because of a particular colonel or general, to think that the entire Confederate army had an apparatus in place to get this done is mind-boggling in scope (and again, something you'd think one would have heard about).
Although I haven't read 'Curiosities of the Confederate Capital' by Brian Burns, it seems more like a supermarket factoids "history" rather than serious historical research that has been peer-reviewed, etc. I did some online research on Mr. Burns, and can't find anything attesting to his background or credentials. Is he even a historian? If so, where did he study, and in which journals did his research originally appear before publication? Perhaps I'm wrong here, but the whole thing smells fishy. Even writers of dubious historical accuracy that specialize in anecdotal stories like this one (I'm looking at you, Shelby Foote) have never brought this up (and I've read all 3 of Foote's massive Civil War Narrative volumes). Bruce Catton, Foote, James McPherson, Doris Kearns-Goodwin, and Jay Winik are all authors I've read recently on the Civil War, and none of them brought up this Les Miserables issue.
Just my two cents based on primary and secondary sources on the subject.