Thomas Benton Alexander Research Paper

I decided to do my civil war paper on a man named Thomas Benton Alexander. In his diaries, it almost immediately starts off with gunships, shootouts and bombing’s. Thomas explained that this happened almost every day. For a good while at any given moment, he would be in gunfight with the opposing army. I cannot imagine how this soldier felt on a day to day basis being attacked and seeing his fellow soldiers, and most likely good friends, being killed in front of his eyes. Day and night shootouts were happening with brief periods of silence. My guess would be that the enemy needed to recuperate and strategize. By mostly attacking at night, which from what I can make out of things, was sort of becoming a normal thing where Thomas Alexander was at, would possibly give them the upper hand. This would lead me to question if they ever got to sleep at night and what Thomas and his peers sleep schedule was like. Nevertheless, Thomas and his fellow soldiers tried to hold off from any attacks by the opposing side. Thomas himself in his diaries spoke of sharpshooting a lot, so I can imagine he was good at keeping enemy lines from being took over for a while. In the end though, Thomas’s diary talked about him being surrounded and arrested after their armies surrender at port Hudson. From what happens for a while after is kind of confusing to me a first. The reason why is because Thomas talked about the imprisonment camp as if it was nonexistent. He spoke of it as if it was a regular base camp and not an imprisonment. I will note that he did state that some of the soldiers on his side were paroled, with Thomas being paroled a while after. Later, in Thomas’s Federal
He experienced firsthand the brutal casualties that wars brought on, much like soldiers today, and he embodies the type of person that people can visualize as being determined to make it out alive and return