Time travel: Civil War diaries and letters posted online


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STARKVILLE, Miss. (AP) — Civil War diaries by a Union officer and letters by a Union soldier can now be read on a Mississippi State University website.

The university says in a news release that the documents are part of the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library housed on the Starkville campus.

Orville Babcock was an Army officer and engineer who eventually became Gen. Grant's aide-de-camp. His diaries from 1863 to 1869 cover his perspectives on the Siege of Vicksburg and his own war time experiences in Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee before he was summoned to Virginia.

The diaries contain information about his post-war experiences in Washington, where Babcock was personal secretary to Grant during his presidency.

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