Diary of a Christian Soldier: Rufus Kinsley and the Civil War
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Annotated, 1/8/2004
EAN 9780521823340, ISBN10: 052182334X
Hardcover, 304 pages, 24.1 x 16.5 x 2.5 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
This book offers a meticulous reconstruction of the life of Rufus Kinsley - an ordinary New England soldier who during the Civil War became an officer in one of the nations's first and most famous black regiments - and an expertly edited transcription of Kinsley's hitherto unpublished wartime diary. Kinsley's diary sheds light on a long neglected theater of the war - the battle for the bayou country of southwestern Louisiana - and it illuminates the workaday routines of black and white soldiers stationed behind Union lines but thoroughly immersed in the unprecedented improvisations that accompanied the social revolution that was emancipation. Kinsley's perspective is that of a too often neglected type: the absolutely dedicated evangelical abolitionist soldier who believed that the war and its consequences were divine retribution for the sin of slavery. The introductory biography places Kinsley's civil war experience in the context of his life and his times.
Part I. Preface
Part II. Introduction
1. Early life
2. Civil war
3. Post-civil war
Part III. Diary
Part IV. Index.