(CIVIL WAR OHIO) Diary of an unidentified soldier in the 10

Sale 2287 - Lot 191

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Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600

(CIVIL WAR--OHIO.) Diary of an unidentified soldier in the 104th Ohio Infantry. 33 manuscript diary pages, plus 23 pages of later memoranda dated through 1917. 16mo, contemporary calf, minor wear; lacking front free endpaper. Vp, 1 January to 2 February 1865

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The 104th Ohio had recently fought at the Battle of Franklin. This diary begins with their pursuit of the Confederates through the back woods of Tennessee, from Columbia to Clifton. The region was virtually uninhabited and the travel was hard: "We marchd til eleven oclock in the night. We waded the crek and went to camp close to creek. There was some profanity. This is a perfect wildern. We only seen a few log huts all day" (4 January). Befitting a border state, local Confederate sympathizers tried to pick off stragglers, but Union sympathizers protected them: "There was a detail of twenty men sent acrost the river to get some of our men that the citizens have hid from the guerillias" (9 January). On 17 January, the regiment boarded a steamship and headed up the Ohio River, then went by train to Washington, DC, where our diarist played tourist: "I was up to the Capitol of the U.S. I was through the house. It is a splendid house" (27 January).
After the war, the diary somehow ended up in the hands of a Canadian immigrant named Eli M. Barker (1836-1914) and his family, who farmed and ran a hotel in rural Alcona County, MI. So far as we can tell, they had no close relatives in the Civil War, and their connection to the diarist is unknown.