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CIVIL WAR -- J. E. CALDWELL - 3rd South Carolina.

Lamar, TX: 1 September 1902. 21 pp., recto only (355 x 205 mm). Bound in later black cloth boards. Condition: slight professional restoration to preliminary and final leaves not affecting text. memoir of a south carolina private describing many of the war's most important movements and battles: including first manassas, seven days, frederickburg, gettysburg and petersburg. Caldwell's memoir begins describing South Carolina's secession and his volunteering into the 3rd South Carolina Infantry, Company E. Caldwell describes "hearing his first musketry" at the Battle of Bull Run on 21 July 1861 and reports the famed moment when General "Bee appealed to his men to 'Look at (General) Jackson standing like a stone wall.'" The winter was spent moving in the vicinity of Manassas, Richmond and Williamsburg. His regiment eventually engages in the "seven days fight" and invades Maryland on September 5 and fights the battle of Sharpsburg on the 17th. On 1 January 1863 Caldwell writes: "Abraham Lincoln informed us that our negroes were free - the second time ... How considerate he was; He told us before he became president he had not authority in the matter." At Gettysburg, "the greatest fight that ever occured on ther American Continent was witnessed." The shell attacks "shook as if an earthquake was in progress. I think it lasted two hours. Language cannot describe it ... I was unnerved---prostrated." Sent back into the South, the 3rd South Carolina fought across Georgia and Caldwell was injured at Chikamuga and wound up in a hospital in Augusta but was allowed to go home to Newberry with his Father, a representative in South Carolina's Secession Convention. Later Caldwell describes the Knoxville Siege and is eventually sent back in the North, arriving at Cold Harbor after the battle on 6 June 1864. Caldwell continue to describe the Petersburg Siege, the battles at Berryville, Charleston, Port Republic each littered with names of the wounded and killed. Promoted to the rank of Sergeant in October 1864, he spent the winter in Richmond before leading troops in the vicinity of the city before "Lee surrendered. I got my parole Wedsnesday at noon, and my meal and meat lasted me home." one soldier's remarkable tale of survival throughout the length of the war.

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