Private Smith's Journal Recollections of the Late War

THE Civil War journal of Benjamin T. Smith is the record kept by an unsophisticated 18-year-old of his services in the Civil War, from October, 1861, to November, 1865. Smith’s journal differs from most journals kept by privates because he saw the war from two different levels—as a simple soldier who endured the rough discomforts, the miserable food, the occasional moments of great danger, and the fleeting times of fellowship around the fire, and as a member of a division headquarters, carrying important messages, acting as a mounted scout, serving as General Phil Sheridan’s orderly.