Simple Story of a Soldier
Life and Service in the 2d Mississippi Infantry

Samuel W. Hankins (Author), John F. Marszalek (Introduction by)

9780817351571

Paperback / softback, published 8 September 2004

80 pages, Illustrations
21.5 x 14.1 x 0.7 cm, 0.15 kg

The story is doubtless the most vivid record of a Confederate soldier's life that has been or will be written. [Hankins] gives in detail the most ludicrous events vividly as if a mature, gifted writer had kept a diary at the time, and his truly 'simple story' will create sympathetic interest. It is so devoid of bitterness that a man who served on the 'other side'... would sympathize with him in the hardships and privations of prison life and deplore that the government he served did not when it could render more humane service to him. - Confederate Veteran, 1912

This fast-paced memoir was written in 1905 by 61-year-old Samuel W. Hankins while he was living in the Soldiers Home in Gulfport, Mississippi. It vividly details his years as a Confederate rifleman from the spring of 1861, when at a mere sixteen years of age he volunteered for the 2d Mississippi Infantry, through the end of the war in 1865, when he was just twenty years old and maimed for life. The 2d Mississippi was part of the Army of Northern Virginia and as such saw action at Bull Run/Manassas, Seven Pines and the Peninsular Campaign, and Gettysburg. Besides being hospitalized with measles, suffering severely frostbitten feet, and being wounded by a minie ball at the Railroad Cut, Hankins was captured by Federal forces and sent to a prisoner of war camp on David's Island, New York. Later, he was transferred to a South Carolina hospital, returned home on furlough, joined a cavalry unit that fought at Atlanta, and was stationed in Selma, Alabama, when the war ended. The strength of Hankins's text lies in his straightforward narrative style virtually free of Lost Cause sentiment. Both Union and Confederate veterans could relate to his stories because so many of them had faced similar challenges during the war. Full of valuable information on a common soldier's experience, the memoir still conjures the sights, sounds, and smells of warfare.