We are still waiting for orders which must come very soon. Sleeping on the ground is fun, and a bed of pine boughs better than one of feathers. I have now been in service ten months and feel like a veteran.

I feel to thank God that he has kept me within his fold while so many have gone astray, and trust that he will give me Grace to continue to serve Him and my country faithfully. Then I was a peaceful clerk in Frederick Miller's office. When I look back to March 21/61 I am amazed at what has transpired. I trust my life in the future may be spent in his service. The past year has been an eventful one to me, and I thank God for all his mercies to me. March 21/62I am twenty years of age today. After obtaining his mother's consent, he marched off to war. Because his family needed him, he resisted enlisting in the first regiment raised by Rhode Island, but when the call went out to form the second one, he could not contain his desire to join the army. When his father died, the sixteen-year-old boy left school and became a clerk for a mill supplier so he could support his mother and two brothers. Rhodes's pluck, intelligence, and sense of responsibility showed at an early age. His story shows how the war and the Union Army offered opportunities for advancement to ableand lucky, for many an able man diedyoung men who could face, survive, and grow through adversity.

Primary Source: Elisha Hunt Rhodes - from The Diary of a Union Soldier (1862) from The Diary of a Union Soldier (1862)Įlisha Hunt Rhodes (1842≡917) was a boy when he enlisted as a private in the 2nd Rhode Island Volunteers he was a man and the colonel in charge of the regiment when it was disbanded in July 1865.

All for the Union by Robert Hunt Rhodes