A Southern Soldier Boy: The Diary of Sergeant Beaufort Simpson Buzhardt

This work is essentially a republication of the wartime diary of a Confederate infantryman who served from the outbreak of the War Between the States until he was killed in one of the Seven Days' Battles near Richmond in 1862. The diary has been illuminated with pertinent maps and illustrations, …

This work is essentially a republication of the wartime diary of a Confederate infantryman who served from the outbreak of the War Between the States until he was killed in one of the Seven Days' Battles near Richmond in 1862. The diary has been illuminated with pertinent maps and illustrations, and its day-to-day immediacy has been embellished throughout with lively and colorful excerpts from D. Augustus Dickert's History of Kershaw's Brigade to put the diary into a broader context. The editor has broken down the text into chapters to further categorize the events as the war progressed. Chapters include South Carolina's secession, the call to arms and the march to Virginia, the first Battle of Manassas, winter quarters in Northern Virginia, the Peninsula Campaign, and the Seven Days' Battles around Richmond. Taken as a whole, this work gives the reader the stormy birth of General Lee's legendary Army of Northern Virginia in the days before the stormy death of traditional agrarian civilization.