Diary of a Christian Soldier
Rufus Kinsley and the Civil War

The biography and Civil War diary of Rufus Kinsley, a volunteer soldier from rural Vermont.

David C. Rankin (Author)

9780521823340, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 3 November 2003

304 pages, 34 b/w illus.
23.5 x 16.1 x 2.6 cm, 0.559 kg

'Rankin's book is unique in that it extols a military figure who never participated in armed battle.' Cercles

This book offers a meticulous reconstruction of the life of Rufus Kinsley - an ordinary New England soldier who during the Civil War became an officer in one of the nations's first and most famous black regiments - and an expertly edited transcription of Kinsley's hitherto unpublished wartime diary. Kinsley's diary sheds light on a long neglected theater of the war - the battle for the bayou country of southwestern Louisiana - and it illuminates the workaday routines of black and white soldiers stationed behind Union lines but thoroughly immersed in the unprecedented improvisations that accompanied the social revolution that was emancipation. Kinsley's perspective is that of a too often neglected type: the absolutely dedicated evangelical abolitionist soldier who believed that the war and its consequences were divine retribution for the sin of slavery. The introductory biography places Kinsley's civil war experience in the context of his life and his times.

Part I. Preface: Part II. Introduction: 1. Early life
2. Civil war
3. Post-civil war
Part III. Diary: Part IV. Index.

Subject Areas: History of religion [HRAX], Military history [HBW], Slavery & abolition of slavery [HBTS], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], History of the Americas [HBJK]