Diary and Memorandum Book for 1862. Boston: N. Little & Co., [1862]. 32mo (2 7/8 x 4 1/2 in.). Leatherette with flap closure. 

Front free endpaper inscribed: "Theron W. Haight (Pierrepont Manor N.Y.) Co. K., 24th N.Y.V."

126 manuscript pages of diary (4 supplemental pages at rear) with an additional 15 manuscript pages of accounting and memoranda. 

The 1862 soldier's diary of Theon Wilbur Haight of Elmira, New York, featuring significant content from the Second Battle of Bull Run (Manassas). 

Theron Wilbur Haight of Elmira, New York, enlisted Pierrepont Manor on 7 May 1861 as a private into Company K of the 24th New York Infantry. 

He was promoted early in his enlistment to Corporal on 1 January 1862, when this diary begins. For the first half of the year, the regiment was stationed in northern Virginia, where their days were filled with drills, dress parade, and poor weather. Haight often complained of terrible mud. 

In April, they moved to Fredericksburg, Virginia, and on the 17th & 18th, he wrote: "Started at 7 A.M. for Fredericksburg...several skirmishes took place on route between our cavalry and the enemy. I saw several dead soldiers in & beside the road."

Occasionally, he encountered contraband, escaped slaves seeking quarter in Union camps: "Contrabands keep flocking in as yesterday and the day before. There are now hundreds in our camps." (21 April 1862). He relates a much more sinister story in an additional entry at the back of his journal dated December: " A favorite amusement at Camp Parole is throwing up "n----rs" in a blanket. No negro now dares show his face in camp. As soon as one is descried all the soldiers in hearing start in pursuit + yell at the top of their voices, terrifying the hapless fugitive horribly. The soldiers throw dogs up in the same way."

In mid-August, Haight and his regiment joined Pope's Campaign in Northern Virginia. He records the escalating tensions in entries dated 21-23 August: "The evening cavalry arrived in the middle of P.M. and skirmishes on the south side of the river...at ab't 9 cannonading commenced and with three days rations + 101 rounds of cartridges we were ordered up to support a battery...rebel battery immediately opened on us...rebels woke me up by shelling the wood where we lay...when the sun was 3/4 hour high...we roasted corn. No one was hurt in our reg. an ambulance was shot through with a round shot. 3 wounded + 1 killed in the 14th."

He then recounts the Second Battle of Bull Run, beginning on August 29th: "We engaged the enemy with musketry + 1 piece of Art'ry, but owing to darkness, our hasty field maneuvering and the rough nature of the ground we were thrown into confusion and retreated...The enemy did not follow...This is the second battle of Bull. Run. The rebels increased our confusions by pretending to be our own men and calling on us not to shoot till their volley was ready for us."

He continues on the next day, when he was captured as a prisoner of war:  "The brigade got together in tolerable shape this morning and before noon marched men more to the battlefield sometime after 3 P.M. The 30th + 24th charging on the enemy hidden by a railroad embankment did not succeed in taking it but lost most of the reg. in killed wounded & missing...at last surrendered myself to prevent their firing on our wounded. Was taken 1/1/2 miles to the rear + having lost haversack + canteen had to go to sleep supplyless excepting half a cracker half an apple + half a small ear of corn."

Now a prisoner of war, he continues relating the fate of his comrades and his own situation: "Got myself detailed as hospital nurse so as to assist my wounded friends...Am getting weak from exertion, exposure + want of rest...This is a horrible place + nothing but the pressure of my friends could make me stay here." (31 August -1 September). He was paroled several days later, on 4 September, but remained in ill health. Although his regiment would go on to participate at Antietam and Fredericksburg, Haight would spend the rest of 1862 in recovery. 

Haight would see further promotion, achieving the rank of 1st Lieutenant, though he mustered out at the end of his initial term of service in May 1863. 

A well-written account of the Second Battle of Bull Run and subsequent imprisonment. 

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