Book Description

Includes Civil War Map and Illustrations Pack - 224 battle plans, campaign maps and detailed analyses of actions spanning the entire period of hostilities. “[One of] the Union side’s most revealing and realistic views of soldier life....The diary is especially important for the light which it throws on such basic matters as the tortuous progression from civilian to veteran, the course of morale, the character of soldier life in a volunteer army, the quality of leadership, the awesomeness of battle, and the brutality of war.”—Bell Irvin Wiley, in the Journal of Southern History A native of Warren County, Iowa, Cyrus F. Boyd served a year and a half as an orderly sergeant with the Fifteenth Iowa Infantry before becoming first Lieutenant in Company B of the Thirty-fourth Iowa Infantry. His diary—expanded in 1896 from a pocket diary he carried on his campaigns from Indianola, Iowa, to Lake Providence, Louisiana—offers a full account of soldiering in the Union army. Before his promotion, Boyd was an intermediary between privates and company officers, a position that offered him unique opportunities to observe the attitudes and activities of both the unit leaders and their men. The outspoken Boyd frankly expresses his opinions of his comrades and his commanders, candidly depicts camp life, and intricately details the gory events on the battlefield. Although not always pleasant reading, The Civil War Diary of Cyrus F. Boyd is a vibrant, honest chronicle of one man’s experiences in the bloody conflict. The diary has been heavily edited to ensure it can be understood, initially there was little to no punctuation included.