In the course of doing research for my family history, I've read a lot of diaries/memoirs written by CW soldiers. Some have short, factual entries written during the war, some have long narratives written well after the war was over. All give a glimpse not only of the events observed by the soldier but also of the personality of the writer. Nearly all are interesting but a few are special - just great accounts of one person's life that would be enjoyable to read even if you weren't a big fan of the Civil War era.
So - I'm curious. What's your favorite among the diaries and/or memoirs you've read.
I'm surprised that the Sam Watkins memoir,
Company H, is not mentioned more often in this thread. Here's one of his humorous episodes:
One Sabbath morning it was announced that an eloquent LL. D. from Nashville was going to preach. As the occasion was an exceedingly solemn one, we were anxious to hear this divine preach from God’s Holy Word. As he was one of the “big ones,” the whole army was formed in close column and stacked their arms. The cannon were parked all pointing back toward Chattanooga. The scene looked weird and picturesque. It was in a dark wilderness of woods and vines and overhanging limbs. In fact, it seemed but the home of the owl and the bat, and other varmints that turn night into day. Everything looked solemn. The trees looked solemn, the scene looked solemn, the men looked solemn, even the horses looked solemn. You may be sure, reader, that we felt solemn.
The reverend LL. D. had prepared a regular war sermon before he left home. Of course he had to preach it. Appropriate or inappropriate, it was in him and had to come out. He opened the service with a song. I did remember the piece that was sung, but right now I cannot recall it. But as near as I can now recollect here is his prayer,
verbatim et literatim [latin: “word-for-word”]:
Oh, Thou immaculate, invisible, eternal and holy Being, the exudations of whose effulgence illuminates this terrestrial sphere, we approach Thy presence, being covered all over with wounds and bruises and putrefying sores, from the crowns of our heads to the soles of our feet. And Thou, O Lord, art our dernier [latin: “last”] resort. The whole world is one great machine, managed by Thy puissance [competitive test for a jumping horse]. The beautific splendors of Thy face irradiate the celestial region and felicitate the saints. There are the most exuberant profusions of Thy grace, and the sempiternal efflux of Thy glory.
God is an abyss of light, a circle whose center is everywhere and His circumference nowhere. Hell is the dark world made up of spiritual sulphur and other ignited ingredients, disunited and unharmonized, and without that pure balsamic oil that flows from the heart of God.
When the old fellow got this far, I lost the further run of his prayer, but regret very much that I did so, because it was so grand and fine that I would have liked very much to have kept such an appropriate prayer for posterity. In fact, it lays it on heavy over any prayer I ever heard. I think the new translators ought to get it and have it put in their book as a sample prayer. But they will have to get the balance of it from the eminent LL. D.
In fact, he was so “high larnt” that I don’t think anyone understood him but the generals. The colonels might every now and then have understood a word, and maybe a few of the captains and lieutenants, because Lieutenant Lansdown told me he understood every word the preacher said, and further informed me that it was none of your one-horse, old-fashioned country prayers that privates knew anything about, but was bang-up, first-rate, orthodox.
Well, after singing and praying, he took his text. I quote entirely from memory. “Blessed be the Lord God, who teaches my hands to war and my fingers to fight.” Now, reader, that was the very subject we boys did not want to hear preached about—on that occasion at least. We felt like some other subject would have suited us better.
I forget how he commenced his sermon, but I remember that after he got warmed up a little, he began to pitch in on the Yankee nation, and gave them particular fits as to their genealogy. He said that we of the South had descended from the royal and aristocratic blood of the Huguenots of France, and of the cavaliers of England, but that the Yankees were the descendants of the crop-eared Puritans and witch burners, who came over in the Mayflower, and settled at Plymouth Rock. He was warm on this subject, and waked up the echoes of the forest. He said that he and his brethren would fight the Yankees in this world, and if God permit, chase their frightened ghosts in the next, through fire and brimstone.
About this time we heard the awfullest racket, produced by some wild animal tearing through the woods toward us, and the cry, “Look out! look out! hooie! hooie! hooie! look out!”
And there came running right through our midst a wild bull, mad with terror and fright, running right over and knocking down the divine, and scattering Bibles and hymn books in every direction. The services were brought to a close without the doxology.
This same brave chaplain rode along with our brigade, on an old string-haltered horse, as we advanced to the attack at Chickamauga. He exhorted the boys to be brave, to aim low, and to kill the Yankees as if they were wild beasts. He was eloquent and patriotic. He stated that if he only had a gun he too would go along as a private soldier. You could hear his voice echo and re-echo over the hills. He had worked up his patriotism to a pitch of genuine bravery and daring that I had never seen exhibited, when:
fluff, fluff, fluff, fluff, FLUFF, FLUFF—a whir, a BOOM!
and a shell screams through the air. The reverend LL. D. stops to listen, like an old sow when she hears the wind. He says “Remember, boys, that he who is killed will sup tonight in Paradise.” Some soldier hallooed at the top of his voice, “Well, parson, you come along and take supper with us.”
Boom! whir!
A bomb burst, and the parson at that moment put spurs to his horse and was seen to limber to the rear. Almost every soldier yelled out, “The parson isn’t hungry, and never eats supper.”
I remember this incident, and so does every member of the First Tennessee Regiment.
*
The Watkins memoir includes some tall tales, exaggerations, unfamiliar battle names and obscurities that are clarified in
this version of the book that includes illustrations and 250 annotations.