Bache's diary provides curt but consistent accounts of the Union's military operations, particularly along the Mississippi River. Those include the Battle of Charlotte (4/25), the Battle of Baton Rouge (5/28), and the Battle of Vicksburg (6/28). Notably, Bache travels to shore on at least one occasion, furnishing first-hand accounts of the Confederate South. For example, he attends a religious service, writing, "Some of the officers went to church where they prayed for the President of the Confed. States" (5/13). Later, he describes as Natchez as a "very pretty place" (5/18). Interested researchers might consider pairing this volume with the Thomas Hewson Bache Diary, also from 1862, which provides a surgeon's perspective on the Battle of Baton Rouge.

The Alexander Dallas Bache diary offers an unusual view of Civil War battlefields from the perspective of the superintendent of the United States Coast Survey. Bache served as Captain's Clerk aboard USS Harford flagship, one of 17 Union ships that traveled up the Mississippi River to take New Orleans. With entries spanning the spring and summer of 1862 (4/14-7/13), this volume recounts naval bombardments in the early years of the war, provides textured accounts of the Confederate South, and will no doubt interest researchers who study the Civil War, U.S. military history, and the Confederate States of America.
 
Bache's diary provides curt but consistent accounts of the Union's military operations, particularly along the Mississippi River. Those include the Battle of Charlotte (4/25), the Battle of Baton Rouge (5/28), and the Battle of Vicksburg (6/28). Notably, Bache travels to shore on at least one occasion, furnishing first-hand accounts of the Confederate South. For example, he attends a religious service, writing, "Some of the officers went to church where they prayed for the President of the Confed. States" (5/13). Later, he describes as Natchez as a "very pretty place" (5/18). Interested researchers might consider pairing this volume with the Thomas Hewson Bache Diary, also from 1862, which provides a surgeon's perspective on the Battle of Baton Rouge.

The Elisha Kent Kane Papers and Logbooks include at least 50 heterogeneous notebooks, journals, and logs that may be loosely termed diaries and clustered into four main categories: Kane's arctic expeditions (containing six notebooks); his world travel (eight notebooks); his education, training, and medical practice (24 notebooks); and the various ship logs contained in the Kane Ship Log collection (12 notebooks). Although some of these records are difficult to interpret in isolation, when read together in these suggestive clusters, they will richly reward scholars interested in trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific travel, antebellum medicine, colonialism, and ethnography. Reference F. A. Parker's "Log of the U.S. Frigate Brandywine" (Kane Logbooks, No.7) and Samuel L. Breeze's "Journal of the U.S. Sloop of War Albany" (Kane Logbooks, No.8) for detailed illustrations of antebellum Rio de Janeiro, Macao, Hong Kong, Honolulu, Valparaiso, Veracruz, and the Yucatan.