Voices from Company D

An unprecedented contribution to the field of Civil War history, Voices from Company D collects writings from the diaries of eight members of the Greensboro Guards, Fifth Alabama Infantry Regiment. Woven into a single chronological narrative, these writings provide a unique perspective not only on many of the war's battles and campaigns but on aspects of life and culture in the nineteenth-century South, including friendship and kinship, duty and honor, and commitment and sacrifice. As part of the Army of Northern Virginia, the Guards marched under Stonewall Jackson and Jubal Early and fought throughout the war in such battles as Seven Pines, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Spotsylvania, and finally Petersburg, where all but one of the Guards were captured. While their diaries impart a wealth of information about these and other critical military engagements, they also convey the full range of the wartime experience: from terror to boredom, pride to regret, victory to defeat. About the execution of a deserter, one Greensboro Guard writes, ""Sad & heart-sickening scene! I felt the moment after the volley was fired, an indescribable & mixed sensation of sickness & horror at the sight."" Readers will find singular descriptions of the towns and countryside the men saw, of battlefields and camps, of civilians caught in the path of the war. The diarists also commented on such topics as politics, religion, the home front, the presence of slaves alongside the troops, prices and inflation, troop morale, and such leisure activities from reading to gambling. Voices from Company D is a companion volume to Guarding Greensboro, also by G. Ward Hubbs. Together the books tell a fascinating story of the Guards and their hometown, from the unit's first muster in the early 1820s through the postwar era.