ISBN-13: 9780979044380 / Angielski / Miękka / 2009 / 286 str.
Hidden from the wider world for 144 years, this diary is an astonishing historic record. Wade, of South Bend, Indiana, served in Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiments during the Civil War, and his journals are among the most detailed accounts of daily life during wartime ever to appear in American literature.
Hidden from the wider world for 144 years, this Diary is an astonishing historic record...perhaps Americas Civil War "discovery" of the century. In 1862, Alfred B. "Alf" Wade of South Bend, Indiana eagerly answered President Abraham Lincolns call for fighting men. He enlisted not once - but in two - Indiana Infantry Regiments. He served as a 3-month soldier in the first, an infantry officer for all three years of the second. Even before leaving home, as Adjutant of the 73rd Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment, Alf Wade made up his mind to write a journal of his War years. His own words tell us the discipline of keeping up a daily entry was far from easy. In stress of War it was often that a day was missed, occasionally several. Yet the hundreds of days about which Alf wrote give us one of the most detailed accounts of daily life during Americas Civil War ever to appear in American literature. Wades descriptions of daily events, military and civilian, breathe life once again exactly as it was near a century and a half ago. A loyal, devoted Union soldier, Alf spent many months along the Tennessee River in Alabama. His notes of Southerners whom he knew (with names and dates listed) opens a startling new door to history in the Rebel towns of Athens, Decatur, Huntsville, Stevenson, Triana, Somerville, Gurleys Tank, Larkinsville, Paint Rock, Gillsport, Rome, and others, as well as Washington, D.C.