Seth J. (Seth James) Wells

Born in 1842, Seth J. Wells served as a private in Company H of the 17th Illinois Infantry during the American Civil War. He is remembered for the diary he kept during the Vicksburg campaign, a record that was later published as The Siege of Vicksburg, from the Diary of Seth J. Wells.

Wells wrote with the directness of someone living events as they happened, describing marches, camps, skirmishes, and the long pressure of siege warfare. That everyday perspective gives his work much of its power: it is not a grand overview of the war, but a close, personal account from a very young soldier in the field.

He died in 1864, and the diary remains his lasting legacy. For listeners interested in Civil War history, his pages offer something especially memorable: the voice of an ordinary soldier whose brief life left an unusually vivid witness to one of the war's defining campaigns.