The Civil War journal of John Jackman is one of the richest and most literate of all Confederate soldier narratives to survive the war. It is also the only surviving war period diary of a soldier in the famed First Kentucky or orphan Brigade. Jackman follows his brigade across the war-torn South, from Shiloh to Vicksburg, to Baton Rouge, through all the battles for Tennessee, and on through the Atlanta Campaign and the resistance to Sherman's march to the sea. Jackman is an observer right up to the end, when Jefferson Davis and his fleeing cabinet meet for the last time at Washington,...