Under the Flag of the Nation

Diaries and Letters of Owen Johnston Hopkins, a Yankee Volunteer in the Civil War

Edited by Otto F. Bond

Compiled from the diaries kept by Owen Johnston Hopkins while he was on duty with the 42nd and 182nd regiments, Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and from letters to his family and friends, this book gives a clear picture of the attitudes and sentiments of a young man brought to maturity by the agony of war.

In spite of the horror of battle and the tedium of life in camp, Hopkins maintained a lively sense of humor and a constant devotion to the ideals for which he fought. The Civil War in these pages is Hopkins’s war as he saw it day by day. It is a savage, vindictive conflict fought with canister, “minnie balls,” grapeshot, the Enfield rifle, and the bayonet. Only seventeen when he enlisted in 1861, Hopkins was a foot solider and a witness to the action that took place on the field of battle. What he saw both thrilled and saddened him, aged him beyond his years, and left its imprint upon him for the rest of his life.

While the book’s primary focus is Hopkins’s wartime activities, the epilogue tells what happened to him after June of 1865: his career, his family life, and his death in 1902. Originally published in 1961 and now available for the first time in paperback, this work should be of great interest to historians, Civil War buffs, and general readers alike.

Otto F. Bond was the William Rainey Harper Professor of French at the University of Chicago. He was the author of many books on French and Spanish literature, and he received the cross of the Legion d’Honneur in 1951. Owen Johnston Hopkins was an ancestor of Professor Bond’s wife, Julia Hopkins Bond.