cks of time,"
patiently and faithfully transcribed the entire story, which was fast
becoming illegible in the original camp- and battle-stained little
books, to the clear, typewritten sheets which made them available to the
Wisconsin History Commission. To Miss Minnie Burroughs, now Mrs. Herbert
Turner of Berkeley, California, belongs therefore the basic credit for
this publication.

Further acknowledgment is due to the Editor of the Commission, and to
several of his able assistants on the editorial staff of the Wisconsin
Historical Society. They have with great painstaking verified every word
of the transcription with my original gnarled manuscript, have corrected
(so far as possible by the official rolls) the names of the persons whom
I have mentioned in the Diary, have read the proof, and in general have
put the book through the press. This has involved an amount of labor
which under the circumstances I could not have given, and without which
the publication would have been inexcusable. It is the Editor's
intelligent hand also that furnished most of the geographical
date-lines, the paragraphing, the folio headings, the sub-heads, and the
countless other editorial embellishments so essential to a presentable
publication. * * * Technical work of this sort is entirely lost on the
reader, of course, but it is profoundly appreciated by at least the
present grateful author.

The post-bellum story of this journalizing private of the 6th Wisconsin
Battery does not belong in this book. Should anyone be curious to
connect the soldier in uniform with the militant citizen, who, with more
pacific weapons, has continued his contentions for freedom, justice, and
union, let the following suffice. There was a year's work on the new
farm in Iowa County; then a winter of teaching the common school at
Arena, Wisconsin, with ninety children, ranging from the little German
child grappling with her English A. B. C.'s, to students in algebra and
geometry. During one year there was an honest attempt to accept the path
apparently laid out for me--that of an honest, hard-working farmer. And
then the hunger for books, the blind push on thought lines, the
half-unrecognized leadings towards another career, broke beyond control,
and I left the farm. Then came four years' study at the Theological
Seminary at Meadville, Pennsylvania; a pastorate of a year at Winnetka,
Illinois; nearly ten years of similar work at Janesville, Wisconsin, and
lastly