A Southern Record.: The history of the Third Regiment, Louisiana Infantry
“A SOUTHERN RECORD is an exceptionally valuable commentary on conditions in the Civil War South, written by a Confederate soldier soon after the end of the conflict. Considerable portions of the narrative are transcriptions of notes kept by Tunnard, and the rest is based on fresh memory and on documents and papers provided by his comrades; the work is almost as much a travel book as a military narrative. He was interested in almost everything and everybody he saw whether they were Indians on the western borders of Arkansas, lead miners in southwestern Missouri, swamps, mountains, farmlands, country frolics, or a Mississippi or Arkansas backwoodsman. He gives one of the few descriptions of a Confederate parole camp and of a football game among the soldiers. The author joined the regiment at Baton Rouge at the beginning of the war and was sent down the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers to Little Rock and Fort Smith. After camping there for some weeks, he went into the regions of northwestern Arkansas and southwestern Missouri. Early in 1862, he was transferred to Corinth in northern Mississippi, by boat down Arkansas and up the Mississippi rivers to Memphis and across the country. He operated through northern Mississippi before becoming part of the garrison defending Vicksburg where he was captured and paroled, and ultimately reached a parole camp at Alexandria, Louisiana. A year later he was exchanged and sent to Shreveport, where he was stationed when the Trans-Mississippi Department collapsed more than a month after Lee's surrender.”