Civil War in Apacheland: Sergeant George Hand's Diary, 1861-1864

1996 High Lonesome Books hardcover, ISBN: 0944383351.George Hand (Whiskey, Six-Guns and Red-Light Ladies-George Hand's Saloon Diary, Tucson 1875-1878. Next Stop Tombstone: George Hand's Contention City Diary-1882). Sergeant Hand, a volunteer in the Union Army's California Column during the Civil War, kept a spirited journal while marching through the often inhospitable southwest of the 1860's. Though the Column was sent to prevent the takeover of the Arizona/New Mexico territories by Texas Confederates, Apache raiders were more of a threat than rebel soldiers. Hand, whose previously published journals give a salty, down-to-earth view of the border frontier of Southern Arizona, is no less frank in his descriptions of army life while slogging through a hostile, though pristine, environment--and the officers who command him. "...a first hand chronicle of an army that contributed mightily to the settlement of the Southwest." Book blurb.