Edwin J. Lockwood Civil War Diary

Résumé du livre

This Civil War pocket diary of Lieutenant Edwin J. Lockwood, which he has identified as volume "No. 5", covers the months served with Company G of the 11th Iowa Volunteer Infantry in 1865. Entries begin on January 1st while the regiment is on a brief period of rest at Savannah following Sherman's March to the Sea and the daily entries that follow include comments about the activities of his regiment as it proceeds north through the Carolinas and Virginia to Washington, D.C. in the closing months of the war, and his journey home via Louisville, Kentucky. The diary includes notes regarding skirmishes with the enemy; foraging expeditions of General Sherman's "bummers"; travel on steamers; dismantling of railroads; installment of corduroy roads in marshy areas; the plundering and burning of Columbia, South Carolina; the assassination of President Lincoln; and the surrender negotiations between Generals William T. Sherman and Joseph E. Johnston. Lockwood records multiple meetings with his father John C. Lockwood of the 30th Iowa Infantry, and mentions visits to Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia and the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. Two entries recorded in June 1865 note growing anti-government sentiment among fellow soldiers. In the front of the diary Lockwood wrote instructions that the volume be forwarded to his wife Mary Lockwood (Mt. Pleasant, Iowa) in the event an accident. There is a memoranda section in the back with some financial and statistical notes. A Knights of Pythias calling card for H.D. Walker (Mt. Pleasant, Iowa), with a stamp-size portrait of Walker attached, was found inserted between two pages of the diary. A transcription of the diary has been prepared and is housed with the original