Call Number:

Item 0110

Repository:

University of Delaware Library Special Collections

Extent:

1 volume (18, 110 pages)

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

MSS 0097, Item 0110, Diary of the Reverend Samuel Tupper, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware.

Date:

1865 may 24-june 30 (inclusive)

Creator:

Tupper, Samuel, Reverend, active 1865

Form:

Diaries

Abstract:

This is an American Civil War diary belonging to Reverend Samuel Tupper, describing his volunteer work with the U. S. Christian Commission in diary entries created between May 24 and June 30, 1865, near Alexandria, Virginia.

Reverend Samuel Tupper left Worcester, Massachusetts, for the "Camp of 9th Army Corps near Alexandria" in May 1865. There he served as a delegate of the U. S. Christian Commission, a Union relief organization formed to provide comfort and supplies to the armies and navies not furnished by the federal government. It received its support primarily from churches.

The U. S. Christian Commission was charged with "visiting hospitals, camps, and battle-fields, for the instruction, supply, encouragement, and relief of the men of our army, according to their various circumstances; distributing stores, where needed, in hospitals and camps; circulating good publications amongst our soldiers and sailors; aiding Chaplains in the ministrations and influence for the spiritual and temporal welfare of the men under their care; encouraging special and stated meetings for prayer amongst men in the field and in the hospital; encouraging soldiers and sailors to communicate freely and frequently with their friends, aiding them to do it, etc." Formed in New York in 1861, the organization collected more than $2.5 million in cash, in addition to large quantities of supplies during the four years of the Civil War.

Biographical and historical information derived from the collection.

Reverend Samuel Tupper's American Civil War diary documents his volunteer relief work with the U. S. Christian Commission in May and June, 1865. The log book was issued by the Commission and provided delegates with eighteen printed pages of regulations for discharging their duties, blank space to record their daily work, and memoranda pages to detail names of soldiers assisted.

Tupper left Worcester, Massachusetts, and began his duties near Alexandria, Virginia, where he ministered to Union soldiers. He recorded many daily diary entries including information about sermons, duties, and post-war conditions for civilians. He also recorded about a dozen names of soldiers and units with which he had worked.

The manuscript is bound in leather. "U. S. Christian Commission" is embossed in gold on the front cover. The front cover and the first three signatures are loose and the spine is broken. The first eighteen pages are printed text with organizational information about the U.S. Christian Commission, with instructions to its delegates. The remaining 110 pages have printed headings and lines. Approximately ninety-five pages are filled with autograph notes, primarily in ink.