The privations of a private

"The privations of a private" by Marcus B. Toney is a Civil War memoir written in the early 20th century. It follows a Tennessee Confederate private through campaigns under Lee and Jackson, grueling marches and battles, hunger and sickness, capture and exchange, and postwar reflections, with chapters extending into Reconstruction and the Ku Klux Klan. The account is candid and strongly partisan, offering a Southern soldier’s perspective on the war’s causes, conduct, and costs. The opening of the memoir states the author’s aim to depict a Confederate private’s life and immediately frames the war through a pro‑Southern lens, defending slavery and blaming abolitionists. Toney then recounts enlisting with the Rock City Guards in 1861, early drills, slow rail movements, and a first campaign in the Virginia mountains under Lee—marked by rain, scant rations, failed operations on Cheat Mountain, and a brief personal exchange with Lee. He joins Stonewall Jackson’s winter expedition toward Bath and Hancock amid brutal cold, an artillery duel across the Potomac, and harrowing picket duty, then marches to Romney and back before being detached to Tennessee in time to witness Shiloh’s aftermath and the Corinth defenses. The narrative moves through Bragg’s Kentucky invasion to Perryville, where his company takes heavy losses; Toney stays behind to bury comrades and nurse the wounded, is paroled to Louisville, and experiences guarded travel, an arrest scare in Baltimore, and exchange via City Point.

The privations of a private, by Marcus B. Toney. Republished by OpenStories from Project Gutenberg eBook #78204.