A History of the Trials and Hardships of the Twenty-Fourth Indiana Volunteer Infantry — Reading Notes

A Memorandum’s Voice

Fulfer’s prose is lean and factual, shaped by the notebook he kept at the time. He rarely pauses to explain or moralize; instead, he records movement, weather, and casualties with the brevity of a man who has little leisure for reflection. When describing the aftermath of Champion Hill, he notes that “there was hardly a living tree on the field” and that “one could see the dead leaves for miles.” The observation is precise but unadorned—a visual detail that conveys devastation without editorializing. This restraint is consistent throughout the excerpts: Fulfer reports that “not much pains were taken in burying the dead rebels” without further comment, letting the fact stand for itself.

The Rhythm of March and Rest

The narrative moves in a steady pulse of marching orders, halts, and skirmishes. Dates anchor every paragraph: “On the morning of the 5th, we moved out to Black River”; “We lay here until the morning of the 7th”; “On the 9th we marched to Clinton.” This chronological scaffolding gives the reader a clear sense of time passing under constant strain. Fulfer also notes the mundane tasks of soldiering—cleaning up, granting paroles, distributing picks and shovels—alongside the violence. When the regiment reaches a cornfield “just in good roasting ears,” the detail is both a marker of season and a reminder that war intrudes on ordinary life.

Landscape as Witness

Fulfer pays close attention to terrain and its transformation by battle. At Jackson, he describes a fort “built of cotton bales and earth” with a deep ditch outside, and notes that the regiment fought “in some black oak bushes” where passing bullets and shells “made all sorts of noises.” The magnolias at Champion Hill, “torn and shot up until the place looked like an old deadening,” become a symbol of the war’s physical toll. These landscape details are not decorative; they are the setting in which the 24th Indiana lived and fought, and Fulfer records them with the eye of a man who had to read the ground for cover and movement.

Officers and the Chain of Command

The excerpts show a keen awareness of command structure. Fulfer lists corps commanders, division officers, and regimental leaders, and he tracks which general was in charge at each stage. When General Lawman’s division charges without orders and is repulsed with heavy loss, Fulfer notes that Lawman’s command was taken from him and placed under General A. P. Hovey. The episode is reported without praise or blame, but the inclusion of the detail suggests that Fulfer understood how decisions at the top affected the men on the ground. The rosters at the front of the book—naming every officer and private of Company A—reinforce this sense of a unit whose members are individually accountable.

Fulfer’s history rewards a reader who attends to small details: the mention of “good roasting ears” of corn, the sound of bullets in oak bushes, the distribution of picks and shovels. These are the textures of a soldier’s experience, preserved in a memorandum and shaped into a narrative that moves at the pace of a march. The book does not offer a grand strategic overview; it offers the view from the ranks, where the next skirmish is always just ahead and the ground underfoot is never safe.

Reading those terse entries about the 24th Indiana’s muddy marches, I kept thinking how a life gets reduced to what the body endures. The same quiet grip came from Life and Remarkable Adventures of Israel R. Potter — A Closer Reading, where survival feels less like triumph and more like a long, weary exhale. That book lingered with me—not for glory, but for its ache.