• Full Citation: Melville Cox Robertson, "Journal of Melville Cox Robertson," Indiana Magazine of History 28, no. 2 (June 1932): 116-137.
• Home: Jefferson County (Deputy)
• Year: 1864-1865
• Regiment:93rd Indiana Volunteer Infantry, Co. E
• Abstract: Robertson (1840-1865) joined the 93rd in February 1864. He writes of his boredom in camp, and castigates other soldiers for getting drunk while he abstains. He was captured in the Battle of Brice's Crossroads and transferred to Cahaba Prison, where he continued to keep his journal. He was released in a prisoner exchange in March 1865, but contracted typhoid in a parole camp at Vicksburg, Miss. and died April 22, 1865.
• Sample Text:
  1. "To-day at 2 o'clock P.M. I leave home perhaps forever. If I should return at the end of three years alive I hope to have the proud satisfaction of saying 'my country is saved and I have done my duty as one of its citizens.' If I fall, let my friends forget my faults and remember me only as a dead soldier of the republic. I want no brighter immortality." (message left in his father's Bible before leaving, March 22, 1864) (p. 117)
  2. "While writing the preceding [sentences] the death gasp of a fellow soldier called me away....God preserve me from such a burial. Let me die and be buried at home by friends no matter how humble they may be. Oh let affecton's tear water the mound that rises over my lifeless breast." (Cahaba Prison, June 24, 1864) (p. 129)
• LC Subject Headings:
  1. Brice's Crossroads, Battle of, Miss., 1864
  2. Cahaba Prison (Cahaba, Ala.)

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