[1-5] 6-34 [2] pp. (12mo) 18 cm x 11.2 cm (7x4½"), facsimile printed wrappers, stitched; washed. First Edition.
This account covers the period January 6, 1847-July 14, 1848. The author, a tailor by trade, volunteered for service when he was nineteen and served until the end of the war in the Westmoreland Guards, which served as Company E, 2nd Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers. Of the ninety-four original men in Hartman’s company, only forty-three lived to see the final victory at Mexico City.
The entries are done in typical diary fashion with diurnal entries rather than as a connected narrative. They range from fairly brief entries to more elaborate ones that give considerable detail about events. After landing at Veracruz and participating in the siege, his company went on to fight at Cerro Gordo, Churubusco, Chapultepec, and Mexico City itself. His accounts of those battles constitute valuable eye-witness testimony from a man who was literally in the trenches and on the front lines. Although only a private, he was a literate, wry observer with a good appreciation of overall battle strategy and tactics and of how his unit fit into the greater scheme of the actions he describes.
The diary is also quite valuable for the insights it offers into the sometimes difficult everyday life of the soldier during the Mexican-American War. Despite the overall success of the U.S. efforts, the individual soldiers themselves were often hungry, hot, tired, and in many ways downright miserable. Frequently they had to sleep in the open and were soaked by rain because there were no tents. Hartman showed admirable patience and fortitude in the face of such situations. At times, appalling accidents occurred. In one instance on September 10, Hartman notes that not even sleeping was safe: “As we were laying down to rest awhile, Edward Hansbury was run over by a cannon wagon: his feet were both severely smashed” (p. 18).
Hartman’s relief at the end of the fighting is palpable: “The glorious stars and stripes are floating triumphantly over the Palace Nacional and the city of the Astecs [sic]. It is a proud and gratifying sight to us poor, used up boys, who have left home and country and everything dear, to witness this sight” (p. 20). But even in peace, the dying continued, some soldiers succumbing to typhus and others murdered by Mexicans. Hartman expresses even greater relief in his final words upon being mustered out: “Happy I do assure you that I am once more a Free Citizen of the United States” (p. 28).