author
Seth J. (Seth James) Wells
1842–1864
Drawn from the diary of a young Union soldier, these pages give a vivid, ground-level view of the Civil War and the siege of Vicksburg. They feel immediate and human, full of the strain, routine, and resolve of army life.
1 Audiobook
The siege of Vicksburg, from the diary of Seth J. Wells
by Seth J. (Seth James) Wells
About the author
Born on April 26, 1842, near Rising Sun in Des Moines County, Iowa, Seth James Wells grew up in his grandfather Ewell’s family near Utica in Macomb County, Michigan. He is remembered for a Civil War diary that follows his daily life as a soldier from June 1861 to July 1864.
Wells served in the Union army during the American Civil War, and his writing records camp life, marches, hardship, and combat in a direct, unpolished way that makes it especially readable now. The best-known portion of his diary became The Siege of Vicksburg, published after his death in 1915, preserving his firsthand account of one of the war’s defining campaigns.
He died in 1864, still very young, and that gives his journal an added weight: it is not a polished memoir written long afterward, but the voice of someone living through events as they happened. For readers interested in personal war writing, Wells offers something rare and memorable — history seen through the eyes of an ordinary soldier.