Booknotes: From a Yankee to a Rebel Diary

New Arrival:

• From A Yankee to A Rebel Diary: The Collective Civil War Diaries of Private George Washington Hall, 14th Georgia Infantry, and Private Jacob L. Elsesser, 9th Pennsylvania Reserves edited by Mary T. Hall (Lot's Wife Publishing, 2025).

One might suppose that combined Union and Confederate soldier diaries are a Civil War rarity, and, indeed, Foreword contributor Frank O'Reilly is aware of only two in existence. The first pairs Union soldier Joseph Myers and Confederate soldier Thomas Lutman, the former obtaining the latter's diary after Lutman was killed during the Chancellorsville Campaign. The second shared diary, the one under consideration here, has been newly edited by Mary Hall and published under the title From A Yankee to A Rebel Diary: The Collective Civil War Diaries of Private George Washington Hall, 14th Georgia Infantry, and Private Jacob L. Elsesser, 9th Pennsylvania Reserves.

From the description: "When Private Jacob Elsesser of the 9th Pennsylvania Reserves carried a small Daily Remembrancer [the Daily Pocket Remembrancer for 1862 was a widely published blank diary purchased by Elsesser] into the 1862 Peninsula Campaign, he had no idea his diary would one day be continued by the enemy. After months of recording the grinding uncertainty of war, Elsesser abandoned the book in the chaos following the battle of Beaver Dam Creek near Richmond." The diary was then found and kept as a souvenir by editor Mary Hall's great-grandfather. "Fast on the heels of the 9th Pennsylvania Reserves was the 14th Georgia Infantry, including Private George Washington Hall, who discovered the small book in the smoldering ruins of the deserted Union camp. Claiming it as his own, he vowed to turn "a Yankee diary into a Rebel one" and proceeded to fill its remaining pages for nearly three years."

Prior to the 1862 Peninsula Campaign, Hall fought in the mountains of western Virginia. After the Seven Days, camp sickness kept him out of action during the Army of Northern Virginia's ensuing battles until his return in 1863 for Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. During the 1864 Overland Campaign, he was captured at Spotsylvania and held at Fort Delaware until exchanged in March 1865. Like Hall, French-born Elsesser enlisted in May 1861. His three-year service term with the 9th Pennsylvania Reserves expired in May 1864, ironically the same day that Hall was captured.

Mary Hall's From a Yankee to a Rebel Diary is more than the shared Elsesser-Hall diary. It "includes George Washington Hall's additional journal writings from 1862-1863 and a unit history written by Elsesser and preserved by his descendants." Over five-hundred pages in length, Hall's impressive presentation of these collected historical writings is enhanced through numerous photos and detailed battle maps from cartographer Hal Jesperson. Each chapter contains extensive bridging narrative that supplies the reader with a prodigious amount of essential campaign and battle context. Footnotes provide both source identification and further commentary. More reference material can be found in the appendix section, notably Hall's weather log and additional daily activity logs from both soldiers.

In sum, "George Washington Hall's and Jacob Elsesser's diary entries, preserved across generations, offer a rare and deeply human window into America's defining struggle, with the degree of context that converts those entries into a true narrative of the war in the Eastern Theater."