A Volunteer's Adventures: A Union Captain's Record of the Civil War

John William De Forest (1826-1906), a native of Connecticut, enjoyed a long career as a prolific writer, mainly of fiction. During the Civil War he was a captain in the 12th Connecticut Volunteers, taking part in the capture of New Orleans, the Port Hudson campaign, and the Battle of Cedar Creek, Virginia. After the war, he served as a subassistant district commissioner for the Freedmen's Bureau in Greenville, South Carolina.
A Volunteer's Adventures, first published in 1946, is De Forest's vivid description of his experiences at war. It consists of letters to his wife during his service, supplemented by six articles published in Harper's New Monthly Magazine and Galaxy between 1864 and 1868. De Forest intended to compile these pieces into a book but never did. James H. Croushore finally accomplished the task, adding chapter divisions with introductory notes to give form and continuity to the whole. The result is a first-rate personal war narrative - recently named one of the one hundred finest Civil War books by Civil War magazine - more than half of which deals with Louisiana from De Forest's Yankee perspective.