Personal Recollections
of the Civil War

BY ONE WHO TOOK PART IN IT AS A PRIVATE
SOLDIER IN THE 21ST VOLUNTEER REGIMENT
OF INFANTRY FROM MASSACHUSETTS

BY

JAMES MADISON STONE

BOSTON, MASS., MDCCCCXVIII
PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR

Copyright, 1918
By James Madison Stone

All rights reserved

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PREFACE

This volume does not claim to be a tactical, or strategic history of thecampaigns of which it treats; it aims rather to be a narrative of theevery-day life and experience of the private soldier in camp andfield—how he lived, how he marched, how he fought and how he suffered. Nosooner had some of the volunteers reached the front, and been subjected tothe hardships and exposures of army life, than they fell sick, were sentto the hospital and were discharged without passing through any seriouscampaigns. Others were wounded early, were disabled and were never able toreturn to their regiments. The more fortunate passed sound and unscathedthrough battle after battle and campaign after campaign through the wholewar. Three years of active campaigning and a year in the hospital was theallotment of the writer, who thus was in the service from the beginning tothe end of the war.

Whatever the merits or demerits of this work may be, the impressions andthe composition are my own. They are an elaboration of notes made duringthe war and directly after it, following which, it has taken the form of adiary.

[Pg 6]The part of the work which has been least interesting, consumed more timeand required some research, has been in fixing the dates when thedifferent incidents occurred, they having passed entirely from memory longago. With these few words, the work is submitted by the writer to hiscomrades of those four eventful and trying years, when the life of theRepublic hung in the balance, in the hope that it may be an aid in callingto mind fading recollections of pleasant incidents, as well as heroicdeeds performed by comrades.

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CONTENTS