The previously unpublished diary of John H.S. Funk is an important source for the first year and a half of the War Between the States in Virginia.

Funk was a frontline combat officer—captain, lieutenant-colonel, and colonel of the 5th Virginia Infantry Regiment in the famed Stonewall Brigade. He vividly records, almost day by day, a soldier’s life and battles—First Manassas, Jackson’s Valley Campaign, the Seven Days, Second Manassas, Cedar Mountain, and others.

Funk appears as a real man as he records the miles marched by Jackson’s “foot cavalry,” first-hand observations of Yankee war crimes against civilians, and the terrible death toll of Confederate fighters.