A Southern Record: The History of the Third Regiment Louisiana Infantry

By William Tunnard and William L. Shea

Originally published in a limited edition in 1866, this memoir of Will Tunnard’s experiences and observations of the Civil War in the West, where he served in the famed Third Louisiana Infantry, is one of only a handful of chronicles left by western Confederate soldiers. His first-person account of the battles of Wilson’s Creek, Pea Ridge, Iuka, and Corinth as well as the seige of Vicksburg, is a vivid history of these hard-fought campaigns which determined the outcome of the war in the Trans-Mississippi theater.

Using letters and diaries assembled from former comrades as well as his own daily journal, Tunnard tells the story of his regiment and its extraordinary odyssey from the Gulf of Mexico to the Ozark Plateau and from the Indian Territory to Mobile Bay. He offers an extensive and valuable account of capture and parole at Vicksburg and includes muster rolls which will interest genealogists as well as Civil War scholars and history enthusiasts. With a clear eye for detail and an engaging, objective style, Tunnard conveys the pathos of war and recounts the trials of camp life, social conditions, and the war’s affect on the civilian population.

Noted Civil War scholar William L. Shea supports the original text with background on the regiment and the time period, sketching a helpful chronology of events. In retelling this remarkable story of comradeship, hardship, endurance, courage, pride, and eventual defeat, Tunnard and Shea give modern readers a rare glimpse of the war in the West.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
• Release date: Jul 1, 1997
• ISBN: 9781610753920

Book preview

A SOUTHERN RECORD

CHAPTER I

TRUTHFULNESS is the gem which gives to History its greatest charm; the golden light which adorns it with mellow rays for all coming time. Hence in making History by our own deeds, or writing them for present and future ages, we should adhere strictly to the promulgation of facts alone. It is a lamentable circumstance that deep-seated, ineradicable prejudices have been ingrafted into every published record which has been given to the public concerning the late struggle. Men must be governed by fixed principles, must adhere to cherished thoughts and feelings, and hence act, speak and write in conformity with these controlling influences. Thus the Northern mind thinks of the war as a gigantic rebellion to destroy the American Government, while the South conceived it to be a struggle for the preservation of constitutional freedom and their peculiar institutions. No one at the present time can properly determine the truth. Justice, with her nicely-balanced scales, must wait for historians of the next century to properly weigh facts, in order to discriminate between the North and South, and give to the world a correct record of events connected with this gigantic internecine strife. Fanaticism, that foul demon of discord and strife, first reared its hydra-head among the mountains and hills of New England. From an insignificant birth, it grew in strength and power until its influence extended over the whole North. The first aim and object of this foul spirit was the eradication of slavery on this continent, an interference with the peculiar institutions of one section by the powerful arm of the opposing section. In opposition to fanaticism grew up an equally malignant spirit in the South. As years passed by, feelings of hatred and enmity first engendered, grew in intensity and bitterness until all compromise was rejected and the sword was unsheathed to settle the differences which existed. Of the opening acts of the war it is needless to write. They are known by every man, woman and child in the land, and are engraven in characters of living light upon millions of throbbing hearts. After the election of Abraham Lincoln by a sectional minority, the Southern States, commencing with South Carolina, one by one severed the chains which had bound them in loving ties to the General Government. Banished was the starry flag which had floated so proudly over a great and powerful nation, forgotten were the wise teachings of a Washington, when fanatical hate, marshaling its hosts, was confronted by a spirit of stern and uncompromising resistance. Human thought fails to express, in its conception of material objects, and their concomitant surroundings, the magnitude of this struggle. Neither can human mind place the blame where it justly belongs, without introducing amid its conceptions prejudices which, expressed, would destroy its reliability. Hence we infinitely prefer that others discuss this question pro and con, rather than make it a subject of conjecture and speculation in the pages of this