A Mississippi Rebel in the Army of Northern Virginia: The Civil War Memoirs of Private David Holt

by Michael B. Ballard (Editor), Thomas D. Cockrell (Editor)

Born the eighth child in a wealthy Mississippi plantation family in 1843, David Eldred Holt joined Company K of the 16th Mississippi Regiment in 1861 and served in the Eastern theater throughout the Civil War. Late in his life, at a time when many former soldiers, both Union and Confederate, were reliving their memories of that event, Holt penned this memoir, recounting the idyllic life of an affluent southern boy before the war and the exhilarating, sometimes humorous, often terrifying experiences of a common soldier in camp and in battle. This new edition has been expanded to include Holt's never-before-published diary entries from the last year of the war.

400 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2001

About the author

Michael B. Ballard is university archivist and coordinator of the Congressional and Political Research Center at Mississippi State University.

Reviews

[Frederick]

An interesting primary source, a first-hand account of why this Confederate fought in the American Civil War. Slavery was a huge reason. This is a very good eyewitness account.

[Cameron Poole]

One of my favorite Civil War memoirs. This book should be better known than it is.