Unholy Rebellion: The Civil War Diary of Charles Adam Wetherbee

Book excerpt: "I left three years ago to do my part in putting down this unholy rebellion." By 1861, Charles Adam Wetherbee had officially traded his comfortable life as a college student for one that included drafty Sibley tents, long marches in weather and wilderness of all kinds, and bloodshed. A Union infantryman with the Thirty-Fourth Illinois Volunteer Regiment, he survived the battles of Shiloh, Stones River, Liberty Gap, Atlanta, and others. One hundred years later, long after Wetherbee had died, a tattered and faded diary was found at a home in Lawrence, Kansas. The homeowner opened its pages and was astonished to discover that Wetherbee had penned every detail of his daily life during the Civil War. Wetherbee's diary presents a realistic view of what a soldier's life entailed, as the reader is thrust into the firsthand drama of the Civil War as it was endured by enlisted participants. Get a true sense of what the Civil War was like from someone who was there to witness an Unholy Rebellion.