A Fascinating Look At Past Events · 8:21pm Mar 16th, 2023
So last week I finished my Night Vale book and was looking for my next “physical” read, if you will. Perfect timing, as I just got a proper, solid bookshelf to replace the cheap, literally molding one I’d had since high school and needed to sort through my collection anyway. While going through it, I rediscovered something… unique.
There is a “book”. I use quotes there because I’m not sure if the term qualifies; its binding and its formatting are entirely different from what one would normally associate with the moniker. For example, rather than a traditional cover that folds around the pages, this is a bunch of regular pages between two plastic sheets; no spine to speak of to protect the back.
The book is old, dating from the 1970’s, but its contents are far older. I can’t recall the story of how my family came upon it. I can only assume my parents or grandparents know the transcriber – a strong possibility considering he’s from the same geographical area I grew up in. It is not a story of creative fiction but something more historic.
It’s the transcript of the journal of a Union soldier and his life as a prisoner of war in Texas during the American Civil War.
Not just a transcript, but the draft of a transcript; the pages have penned-in editing notes where the transcriber attempted to ‘modernize’ some of the soldier’s now-archaic terminology. There are no chapters and little in the way of paragraphs, just a continuous stream of text.
Now, I’ve had this book for a few years at this point. My mother gave it to me when she learned of my interest in writing a period piece for the Civil War (which I didn't do, but it’s still an interesting idea). I never actually read it in all that time, but I decided to now.
I am surprised at just how interesting it is. Yes, it’s a depiction of life during the Civil War, but it’s not only that. The guy who wrote the journal is genuinely entertaining. I read about his antics, how he escaped the first guy to capture him only to run right into a bunch of hidden Confederate soldiers (“Rebs”, as he calls them), and instead of trying to flee he starts making jokes. There’s the part where he needs some money so he starts an in-prison barber shop with another POW. There’s the “Old Colonel” who is the prison camp’s marshal and who he regularly just walks up to and has a friendly chat. There’s the way he discovered other prisoners’ escape tunnel just by looking at the shed in which it was being built, or the scheme he worked up with his fellows involving a trash wagon (they’re very own Underground Railroad, as he dubs it). The guy can charm people, he can lead people, and everyone seems to like him, prisoners and guards alike. He’s a regular Cool Hand Luke.
Now it has to be acknowledged that this is a journal, and there may be a bit of embellishment. But that doesn’t change the fact that this guy’s great at making his own story interesting.
Out of curiosity, I decided to look around online to see if the journal ever got properly published. If you look for the name of the physical copy I have, you won’t find anything. I was rather disappointed at first, but then I decided to check the name of the author himself. That got a result in one location: Amazon. There is a book being sold by the author, and given the name it’s pretty clear it’s the same book: Prisoner of the Rebels in Texas: The Civil War Narrative of Aaron T. Sutton, Corporal, 83rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry. There are only three copies. They go for $800.
Or, if you somehow can’t afford that (I can’t imagine why), there appears to be a copy on Open Library. Don’t know how they work. Never even heard of them until doing this research. But still, if you’re interested in reading a personal account of the period, this seems like a great way to do it. I’m only 30 pages in but greatly enjoying it.
I’m still wondering how my family got this thing. Maybe I’ll ask when I visit this weekend.
That sounds pretty interesting! I'll see about opening OpenLibrary at some point to give Sutton's book a look.
damn, that's cool :O
not as far back as the Civil War, but I did recently find out an uncle had once gifted me a top secret Japanese phrasebook from WWII :D right up my alley
What a tale, my friend. Naturally, American Civil War knowledge isn't exactly a taught subject in schools over here, so I couldn't tell you much about its context beyond the bare basic facts, but even just what you shared was very fascinating.
Mm. You do always seem to find some halfway interesting topic (and appropriate fanart, or official art rarely, like this week) for these off-review weeks, don't'cha?
Hey! Get out of my basement, kid! They're collectables. Honest.
What a cool piece of history.
And a way to make $800+
Wow, what a keepsake. So if the copies on amazon are presumably finalized pieces, and your own is an early draft, does that make it more valuable/historically meaningful?
On the topic of books, and if you don't mind me asking, are you thinking of having anything sold at the EFNW book nook? What's the frequency on Frequency?
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A secret Japanese phrasebook? Now that's cool.
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I do try. Some weeks it feels like I've got nothing interesting to say, and others something like this comes up. As to the pictures, I just like to share my discoveries. Who knows, maybe I'll use these off-week blogs as a picture showcase if I've got nothing better to do.
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Collectibles. Sure, old man.
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I honestly question if anyone's ever actually bought one.
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I've asked that question myself several times. I've wondered if a museum would be interested in it. Except it's not the original journal, just a copy from 1972 (apparently the date it was transcribed, which was seven years prior to its publishing). Would that make it less interesting to a curator?
Regardless, it's technically my parents', so I shan't be doing anything with it. At least not now.
Regarding Frequency, the editing job is done and the file is sitting on my computer, waiting to be used. But I wanted to release it at the same time I released the re-edited copies of BPH, Foundations, and Audience of One. My work in regards to all that has slowed down due to other projects, although not stopped entirely; I'm currently working on BPH and have been going at a rate of a chapter a week.
Which leads me to Twilight's Book Nook, I don't know. I'd have to kick my editing run into overdrive to get all four books ready by the due date, which might interfere with my writing productivity, which I only just got back after several years of snail-like slowness. I don't want to risk that. Add to that several interruptions months in the planning, such as my niece coming to the States from Japan for the very first time starting next month. Could I do it? Absolutely. Do I want to? Verdict's still out on that one, but I'm leaning towards going for it ATM. I'll spend a few days trying to both write and edit just to see if I've got the will to get there.
This would come up right when I'm heading out of town for a few days.
5718509 I didn't say they were worth money, I said they were collectables. Like my collection of WARP graphics ElfQuest comics. Some early Dr. Strange comics. Comics that nobody knows about today. Or when they were released. For good reason. Oh, and books. I could probably get fifty bucks out of the whole bunch on Ebay.
That's pretty awesome. And heartening to hear a POW story that isn't awful for once.
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I didn't say they were worth money, I said you were an old man, old man.
Still, that's pretty neat. Makes me wish my sister and I had kept our old comics. We were X-Men fans and had amassed quite the collection (I was quite the Rogue fanboy). I don't know what happened to it, I just sort of forgot about them, then one day I decided to look around and they were gone. Best guess? Mom threw them away.
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The guy does mention a few unpleasant things, like how the rebels allowed trash (and, y'know, "waste") to pile up for weeks in the prison. The protagonist, knowing this would cause disease, pestered the "Old Colonel" about the situation for a week to do something about it, and the old man only did when one of his own guards got stuck in the stuff and he saw firsthand how nasty it was. That's how the whole "Underground Railroad" with the trash wagons got started in the first place.
Did you compare your version to the version on archive.org? It's got paragraphs and chapters. See if the corrections in your copy were included in the book (printed in 1973).
The scanned version has an autograph on the first page:
Damn, Aaron Sutton lived a long time.
Also, some of the Yankee soldiers were bronies. On p. 8 it says, "Conrad Castell, Noah Booker, James Anderson and myself put our meal together and made pones."
His description of his capture is interesting--how matter-of-fact and causally he told it, and how confused things were--soldiers from both sides wandering around in the woods, under no orders, no one sure what was going on around them. It reminded me of the first battle scene in War and Peace, where a character is wandering around lost in the woods for what seems like hours, with fighting going on around him that he can't see through the smoke, and he feels kinda like a tourist, though he doesn't use that word,