This War So Horrible : The Civil War Diary of Hiram Smith Williams

Hiram Smith Williams, born in New Jersey, was an unusual individual.

A skilled carriagemaker and carpenter, Williams settled in Livingston, Alabama, in 1859 and quickly identified with the people around him.

When the Civil War erupted in 1861, he supported the Southern cause, and in 1862, he enlisted in the 40th Alabama Infantry Regiment, serving on detached duty as a skilled naval carpenter in Mobile and as a participant in the Atlanta campaign as a member of a Pioneer unit - composed of men with construction skills.

Williams was taken prisoner just a few days before the end of the war, and spent three months in a prison camp at Point Lookout, Maryland.

Civil War students should find this diary useful because it is a fully descriptive record of a member of the Pioneer Corps.

Little is known about how these units operated and what the internal organisation was like.