



Produced by Peter Podgorek, Stephen Blundell and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by The Internet Archive)









[Illustration]




                 DIARY
                   OF
            AN ENLISTED MAN

                   BY
          LAWRENCE VAN ALSTYNE
             SHARON, CONN.

            NEW HAVEN, CONN.
 THE TUTTLE, MOREHOUSE & TAYLOR COMPANY
                  1910




   Copyrighted 1910
          by
 LAWRENCE VAN ALSTYNE




             WITH LOVING REGARD
        FOR THE MEMORY OF MY PARENTS
 WHO WATCHED FOR AND EAGERLY READ THE DIARY
    AS FROM TIME TO TIME IT CAME TO THEM
         AND TO MY COMRADES-IN-ARMS
           WHETHER LIVING OR DEAD
  THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED.




PREFACE


In the multitude of books written about the Civil War, very little is
said of the enlisted man. His bravery and his loyalty are admitted and
that is about all. Of his everyday life, the very thing his family and
friends cared most to know about, there is hardly anything said.

It is to remedy this omission in some degree that the following pages
are published. They were written by an enlisted man and are mostly about
enlisted men. They are filled with details that history has no room for,
and for that reason may have an interest quite their own.

They were written at different times, in different places, and under a
great variety of circumstances and conditions. Some were written as the
line halted for rest while marching from place to place, some while
waiting for trains or other modes of transportation, but the most were
written by the light of a candle or a smoldering camp-fire while my
comrades, no more weary than I, were sleeping about me. All were written
amid scenes of more or less confusion, and many times of great
excitement. They were written because of a promise made to my parents
that I would make notes of my wanderings and of the adventures I met
with.

At first I found it an irksome task, taking time I really needed for
rest; but as time went on the habit became fixed, and I did not consider
the day's work done until I had written in my diary of the events that
came with it.

The diary was kept in small pocket notebooks, of a size convenient to
carry in my pocket, and be ever ready for use. There was never a lack of
subjects to write about. Events crowded upon each other so fast that
each day furnished plenty of material for the time I could give it. I
had never been far from home. The sights I saw were new and strange to
me and made deep impressions. These, as best I could, I transferred to
the pages of my diary, so the friends at home could, in a way, see the
sights I saw and that seemed so wonderful to me. When pages enough were
written for a letter, I cut them out and sent them home to be read by
any who cared to, after which they were strung together on a string and
saved for me to read again, should I ever return to do it. When I did
return I found the leaves had so accumulated as to make a large bundle.
There was no need for me to read them at that time, for the story they
told was burned too deep in my memory to be easily forgotten.

So I tied them in a bundle and put them away in an unused drawer of my
desk, where they lay, unread and undisturbed for the next forty-five
years.

But while the old diary lay hidden in my desk a new generation had crept
upon the stage. We no longer occupied the center of it. One by one we
had been crowded off, and our ranks were getting so thin we had to feel
around for the touch of a comrade's elbow. Every year there were more
comrades' graves to decorate, and every year there were fewer of us left
to decorate them. At last we had met an enemy we could not even hope to
conquer. With sadness we saw first one and then another called out, and
they did not return. They had answered the last roll call, and it was
only a question of a little time when the last name would be called, and
the muster-out rolls be folded up and filed away.

It was with a feeling of ever-increasing loneliness that I untied the
