LaForge Civil War Diaries and Correspondence: January 1864 (Diary entries)

When I was double-checking something against the printed version of the text, I discovered that the computer file I'm working from didn't have the diary entries for January 1864, only the two letters. So here are the diary entries. (In the published version, the letters and diary entries are interleaved by date.) A more systematic look suggests that this glitch covers the first half of 1864 (the contents of a specific journal) but not later periods (when the "memorandums" were on loose sheets, sent home included in letters). I suspect that I may have gotten a not-entirely-up-to-date version of the one file.

Turning my mother's computer files into something I could use was quite a frightening chore. She was working in some sort of non-standard word processor and it was tricky to turn the text into rtf to export. My mother was a wonderful woman but she had some odd quirks around working with computers. The files for this project include manual hyphenation. (We had, at some point, convinced her that word-wrap could be relied on and it wasn't necessary to hit "return" at the end of each line.) There was a previous project -- I forget which one -- where, after printing out her hard-copy masters to take to the print shop, she deleted the computer files because she didn't need them any more. Unfortunately it means I'll need to double check all the files against the print copy, but OCR has taken care of the bulk of the missing material I've identified so far.

One of the things I love about reading through Abiel's documents is the minute detail of everyday life, without being drowned in irreleancies. Without him ever saying so, it's clear that he's conscientious and reliable in his duties and is gradually being loaded with increasing responsibility. At this time he's well away from the fighting, but that won't last. His primay duties at "Convalescent Camp" are arranging for transport of all manner of groups of men and escorting them to their goals, as well as various clerical duties.

Abiel's not a plaster saint: he writes about drinking and smoking and gambling (though he feels guilty about the last) and about having a glimpse of women's legs when the wind blew their hoopskirts about. He's 22 years old now, 3 years into his enlistment. He writes with equal enthusiasm about training horses and crops back home, about the complex economy of micro-loans that his pay goes into, about getting a day's leave to go into Washington to see plays and concerts and listen to congressional debates, about his thoughts on reading works like Josephus's The Jewish Wars, borrowed from the library. He writes home hungry for news, to semi-flirt with a woman named Janey, and to beg for a "care package" of food luxuries like butter and honey and home-baked pies. He is clear in his own mind why his is fighting: "Traitors have attacked our free institutions...God cannot be angry with us when we fight in such a sacred cause" and specifies the cause as "Freedom versus Slavery."

So here are Abiel's observations on January 1864. As noted previously, I have done some light editing to this version for readability but the original verbatim text can be found here. I've also decided to add a couple of content warnings immediately before certain entries. Nothing really gut-punching at this point, but mild anti-Semitism and use of terms for black people that fall more in the wince-worthy range than offensive. (But I'm probably not the right person to calibrate them.) Accustomed as I am to reading historic texts, I may not always catch things to flag, but I'll try.

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[Diary entries from January 1, 1864 to June 4, 1864 are contained in a leather-bound notebook entitled "Memoirs of A. T. LaForge".]

( Cut to be kind )