Marching with the First Nebraska: A Civil War Diary

by August Scherneckau, Edith Robbins (Editor), James E. Potter (Editor)

August Scherneckau’s diary is the most important firsthand account of the Civil War by a Nebraska soldier that has yet come to light. A German immigrant, Scherneckau served with the First Nebraska Volunteers from 1862 through 1865. Depicting the unit’s service in Missouri, Arkansas, and Nebraska Territory, he offers detail, insight, and literary quality matched by few other accounts of the Civil War in the West. His observations provide new perspective on campaigns, military strategy, leadership, politics, ethnicity, emancipation, and a host of other topics. Scherneckau takes readers on the march as he and his comrades plod through mud and snow during a grueling winter campaign in the Missouri Ozarks. He served as a provost guard in St. Louis, where he helped save a former slave from kidnappers and observed the construction of Union gunboats. He describes the process of transforming a regiment from infantry to cavalry, and his account of the First Nebraska’s pursuit of Freeman’s Partisans in Arkansas is an exciting portrayal of mountain fighting. An annotated edition that brings to bear the editors’ and translator’s respective expertise in both the Civil War and the German language, Scherneckau’s account is an important addition to primary material on the war’s forgotten theater. It will be a valued resource for historian and Civil War enthusiast alike.

Genres: Civil War

368 pages, Hardcover

First published April 15, 2007

Reviews

[Kris Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting subject and viewpoint. Unfortunately the editors often inserted modern terms and phrases which reduced the historical value somewhat.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Diaries are like a gift from the past for historians. They're a window into the lives of people from different periods of time that memoirs and other documents can't match for candor. Marching with the First Nebraska, the Civil War diary of August Scherneckau, is a wonderful gift of this sort in many ways.

Scherneckau's diary provides material on a veritable laundry list of lesser covered Civil War topics. He was a German immigrant (which although they comprised about 10% of the Union army, didn't leave behind many primary sources), he was one of only 3,000 some odd soldiers to serve from Nebraska, and he also served in the Trans-Mississippi region. Scherneckau didn't participate in any major battles, but he provides interesting commentary on what it was like to fight in the guerrilla campaigns and raids that plagued Missouri and Arkansas. He also served provost and garrison duty in St Louis, and out on the plains of Nebraska protecting settlements and wagon routes from Indian attacks. Besides all of the, Scherneckau served as both an infantry, and then later as a cavalry soldier, providing even more variety to his experiences and observations.

If it wasn't enough that August Scherneckau had an usual variety of experiences, he's also eloquently relates them. He was more educated and worldly than the average Civil War private, and his pleasant prose and descriptive prowess make the diary quite an enjoyable read. Scherneckau was also what would have been considered a radical, in his day, and his attitudes toward blacks, Native Americans, and his fellow Americans of different political stripes are different (and in some ways more enlightened) than what is often found in a Civil War diary.