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A Yankee at Arms: The Diary of Lieutenant Augustus D. Ayling, 29th Massachusetts Volunteers (Voices of the Civil War)

Amazon.com Price:  $22.00 (as of 06/05/2019 07:36 PST- Details)

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Description

When New Englander Augustus Ayling responded to President Lincoln’s first call for volunteers at the outbreak of the Civil War, he started a diary that he would keep until the end of the conflict. That recently found out manuscript now provides us with an atypical panorama of the Civil War as seen by one man who fought in three different theaters.

A company-grade officer in the Union Army for some of the war, Ayling used to be a highly literate, keen-eyed observer who described major events of the war in elaborate detail. Early in his service, he witnessed firsthand the battle of the Monitor and the Merrimack, the peninsular campaign of McClellan, the battle of Fredericksburg, and the retreat of Burnside. When his regiment used to be sent to Kentucky, he fell in love with a girl there, but they were parted by his unit’s transfer to Mississippi in give a boost to of Grant’s Vicksburg campaign. He used to be present at the fall of Vicksburg, some of the Union’s most important victories. His brief wartime romance ended when he went back to Kentucky, suffering from malaria. After his return home on sick leave, he eventually rejoined his regiment out of doors of Knoxville, where it helped to repel Longstreet’s troops.

Following the war, Ayling used to be recalled to a regiment occupying Richmond and used to be made a pass judgement on advocate. From this vantage point he witnessed the beginnings of Reconstruction and of reconciliation between members of Northern and Southern white elites. And, as Charles Herberger notes in an epilogue, Ayling’s military career did not end there: he remained in the army and used to be, for twenty-seven years, adjutant general in charge of the National Guard for the state of New Hampshire.

Throughout his diary, Aylingeloquently described the difficult conditions under which soldiers served, revealing both the pleasures and problems of an officer’s life. As energetic and dramatic in its reportage of key events as it is meticulous in detail, Ayling’s diary provides valuable perspectives on both the battlefield and the homefront.

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