A valuable American Civil War diary
This substantial diary of a Union soldier serving with a New York infantry regiment benefits from its author's talent for observation. Diary entries were made frequently and regularly, sometimes on more than one occasion during the course of a day, and this provides the reader with what amounts to reportage of a conflict which was fought not too long after the professional reporter became a regular feature of campaign and camp in the nineteenth century. Van Alstyne was a man committed to the preservation of the Union and his views on the subject of...