All for the Union

All for the Union is the eloquent and moving diary of Elisha Hunt Rhodes featured throughout Ken Burns' PBS documentary The Civil War. Rhodes enlisted into the Union Army as a private in 1861 and left it four years later as a twenty-three-year-old colonel after fighting hard and honorably in battles from Bull Run to Appomattox. Anyone who heard these diaries excerpted in The Civil War will recognize his accounts of those campaigns which remain outstanding for their clarity and detail. Most of all Rhodes's words reveal the motivation of a common Yankee foot soldier an otherwise ordinary young man who endured the rigors of combat and exhausting marches short rations fear and homesickness for a salary of $13 a month and the satisfaction of giving all for the union.