The Diary of Horace H. Burbank: From April 20, 1864 to March 19, 1865

This is the story of Horace H. Burbank of Kennebunk, Maine, a Civil War veteran, who enlisted in the 27th Regiment Infantry, Maine Volunteers in August of 1862. He extended his service for three months to guard Washington, D.C., for which he received the Congressional Medal of Honor. Burbank went to his grave never knowing the result of the controversy surrounding the awarding of the Medals, which were purged from the Medal of Honor rosters in 1917. He completed his legal education at Harvard Law School, and re-enlisted in 1864 in the 32nd Maine Volunteers as a First Lieutenant. He was captured at Petersburg, Virginia on July 30, 1864, a date which later became known as the "Hiroshima of the Civil War." Three decades later he reflected on his travails as a prisoner of war in a paper read before The State of Maine Commandry of the Military Order of Loyal Legion of the United States in Portland, Maine. As a prisoner he suffered the insults of his captors and was often the victim of cruel and inhumane treatment. Save for a few underlined passages very little of Burbank's personal feelings are in the diary. "The universal and undoubted record of treatment of Union prisoners make the darkest, most inhuman and barbarous pages of the history of our Civil War . . . unnecessary, unjustifiable and heartless . . ."