Category Archives: Elias A Bryant Diary

Today is cold and stormy.  The city of Annapolis, like that of Baltimore, has the appearance of a very old one.  The buildings are mostly of wood and are fast decaying.  The streets are narrow, crooked, and dirty.

We left Washington about 9 o’clock A.M. for Annapolis, where we arrived at sundown today.  After leaving Washington, we went back to Annapolis Junction and branched off there to Annapolis itself.  Just on the outskirts of the city we passed through a gate and encamped in a field well grown over with weeds and burrs. [...]

From October 3 to October 8 was in camp at Washington.  During this week I visited fortifications around Washington.  While here there was a little trouble in Company G.  That Company had some rather rough, ill-behaved set of men.  The cooks of the company were much annoyed by constant complaints among the men regarding their [...]

Today we went into camp about a mile from the capitol, and in full view of the city.  We were in a nice green field near the road. I am on guard today.  Wrote to Sue while sitting on the bank of the road that goes into the city.  I had the pleasure of viewing [...]

Walked over to or three miles to the camp of the Second New Hampshire Regiment, I think, on Blagdensburg Road, to see a Smith A. Whitefield.  He looks as tough as a bear.  You ought to see the darkies; there are more of them than white men.  I saw the grave of a man that [...]

This morning at 2 a.m. we arrived at the Soldiers’ Rest, Washington, a large building near the depot devoted to the temporary use of incoming regiments.  Here we had a breakfast which caused some complaint [tremendous grumbling].  Boiled salt pork, extremely greasy hardtack, and coffee.  E. N. Nutting says the coffee was well seasoned with [...]

We found in Philadelphia a nice breakfast.  We were greeted here with great warmth and we learned that every regiment that passed through was received in the same cordial way.  Four o’clock in the afernoon found us in Baltimore, where we stopped till 9 p.m. and got a good supper.  Here we found a different [...]

(We lay at dock all night and started in the morning at 2 a.m. for Allyn’s Point, on way to New York.) Today found us crossing Long Island Sound.  Many of the men were seasick, although the passage was not a rough one.  Mother was afraid I would be seasick, but I was not.  But [...]

There’s been a lot of talk of the Civil War on my NPR station lately.  As you might know it is the 150th anniversary of the start of the war and, here in the South, the war is still not over.  Well, I have a distant relative who is a Civil War Veteran and who [...]