All Right Let Them Come offers rare observations into the life of an East Tennessee Confederate soldier, John G. Earnest, and the events surrounding his involvement in the transfer to the western Confederate front and the siege of Vicksburg. The passages on the fighting at Chickasaw Bayou and at Big Black Bridge near Vicksburg cast light on the East Tennessee confederates’ military defects, Which Earnest suggests may have come from a lack of training and discipline, in addition to the region’s sharply divided loyalties to the Union and Confederacy and the fact that these soldiers were moved great distances from the homelands they had volunteers to defend.

Earnest’s diary provides a readable account of the day-to-say life of a low-ranking officer. Material on the routines of camp life, on the limitations of the transportation system, which hindered the South’s war efforts, and on travel across the western Confederacy address the lack of provisions, deficits in the Confederate soldiers discipline and morale, and the South’s difficulties in maintaining a cohesive, powerful fighting force in the Western Theater.

The Author: Charles Swift Northen III is a retired investment manager who lives in Birmingham, Alabama. John G. Earnest was his great-grandfather.