On September 8, 1962, John H. Westervelt enlisted as a private into the
1st New York Volunteer Engineer Corps. That same year, he shipped out of
New York on the "Star of the South" to South Carolina to fight for the
North in the Civil War. The following April, he began a journal for his
13-year-old son Frazee so that his child could know of his experiences
in the war.
Sixty-two years later, John Westervelt's journal - 68 entries written on
tattered, yellow pages, a record of "such things as may come under
[his] personal observation" - was found in the trash outside his
former home now West Farms. In early 1995, his drawings, meant to
accompany the written journal, were discovered in the West Point Special
Collections Archives. The two have been reunited in Diary of a Yankee
Engineer.
Westervelt's words, intended not for the history books but for the
education of his young son, present a more humble vision of military
life and of the North's struggle in the Civil War, than the often told
sagas of glory. The journal gives us a rare look at the soldier's life
of relentless tedium, the fatiguing fight of brother against brother -
of pestilence and illness, giving us a "truer, if not beautiful" picture
of war. This is the story of an ordinary man in an extraordinary time -
a man who merely lived as he though right and who died in consequence.
Anita Palladino's introduction provides us with a brief history of the
man and the events of his life. By salvaging John Westervelt's journal
and reuniting its text with its art, Ms. Palladino has unearthed a rare,
firsthand look at the men behind the war of Rebellion.
