Sep 17, 2009 - Sale 2186

Sale 2186 - Lot 88

Price Realized: $ 1,440
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
(CIVIL WAR--MASSACHUSETTS.) Sillars, Malcolm. Manuscript diary of an officer in the 17th Massachusetts Infantry. 67 pages of diary entries, 6 x 2 3/4 inches, original full morocco, missing front cover, backstrip, and first portion of diary, also missing one internal leaf (7 to 15 July), first 8 leaves detached; volume also includes 37 pages of financial accounts and correspondence register from December 1863 to January 1865. Vp, 22 May to 31 December 1864
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Additional Details

Malcolm Sillars (1837-1913) was a shoemaker in South Danvers, MA before the war. He enlisted as a private in the 17th Massachusetts Infantry. At the beginning of this diary he was on a recruiting mission in Virginia, and soon afterwards was promoted to lieutenant and then captain. He was, by his own account, neither well educated nor articulate, and his insecurity about assuming command is a recurring theme of the diary. Typical entries read "The first time that ever I was at roll call to oversee it as an officer. I felt out of my element all togather" (28 July) and "I have a poor edication and must try and improve it" (4 August).
While out recruiting, Sillars described seeing General Grant for the first time ("He doze not look like his pictures"), 15 June, but missed the chance to see President Lincoln a week later, although "I saw his littel boy." Most of the diary is written at New Bern and Newport Barracks in North Carolina. Sillars mentions African-American regiments several times. After Petersburg, he wrote that "the coulerd troops fought well. Ever body speaks well of them. They lost verry heavey" (16 June). He also wrote of a celebration: "There is to be a great time up to Newbern about the Negros, they are going to celibrate the 2nd anivesary of the Emancipition Proclimation" (31 December). Most of Sillars's regiment mustered out on the expiration of their terms in July. While most of the re-enlisting troops received 40-day furloughs back home, Sillars was granted only three days' leave, a source of great bitterness: "I can't with honor take less and I shall not" (12 December). He was particularly anxious to return home, as during the period of this diary he had learned by mail of the birth of his second son (27 May entry) and the death of his eldest son (5 September). Sillars survived the war and returned to Danvers, where he became a shoe manufacturer and raised a large family. with--a furlough request signed by Sillars dated 15 December 1864, rejected on verso.