The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865

Leander Stillwell was eighteen when he enlisted at Camp Carrollton in January 1862 and went into Company D of the 61st Illinois Infantry, staying with it until the regiment broke ranks for the last time in September 1865. He wrote the account more than fifty years later at his youngest son’s urging, working from the pocket diary he bought at Memphis in 1863 and the letters his mother had kept. It moves camp by camp: drill at Benton Barracks, Shiloh, the siege of Corinth, garrison months at Bolivar and Little Rock, Vicksburg, a hospital at Helena, the December fighting outside Murfreesboro. Stillwell claimed no literary skill and kept to what one man in the ranks could see, plain about fear, rations, pay, and the guard duty between battles.