(CIVIL WAR--CONFEDERATE.) Orderly book kept by Colonel James Sibert of the 136th Virginia,...

(CIVIL WAR--CONFEDERATE.) Orderly book kept by Colonel James Sibert of the 136th Virginia, with his commission and portrait. [56] manuscript pages. 4to, original 1/4 calf, moderate wear, rebacked; several leaves detached or excised. Strasburg and Winchester, VA, June 1861 to February 1862

James Harrison Sibert (1819-1881) of Shenandoah County, VA served in the Confederate army as colonel of the 136th Virginia Infantry, a militia unit called up for active duty during the early part of the war. Recorded here are copies of orders issued by Colonel Sibert, as well as orders Sibert received from the generals above him. Sibert orders a wide range of supplies for the new regiment such as canteens and knapsacks, and even a pair of coffee mills, and sets forth the schedules for drills and roll calls. On 22 August, he felt called to order that "the unnecessary firing of guns about the camp must be discontinued. Any violation of this order will be rigidly dealt with." Also transcribed are at least 15 orders from Major General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson as commander of the Valley District, November to December 1861. Most weighty was a 25 November order regarding "the sentence of death in the case of Private James A. Miller. . . . It is hoped that during the continuance of the present war, there may be no occasion for a like vindication of the majesty of the law." On 22 November, Sibert was ordered by militia general Gilbert Meem to detail "30 privates as guard to Genl Jackson's quarters to be relieved every morning." Meem wrote on 7 December to complain that "the enclosure around the Old Presbyterian graveyard, where repose among other honoured remains those of Genl. [Daniel] Morgan of revolutionary memory, has been injured by the troops." The volume is accompanied by Sibert's 1851 commission as a colonel in the Virginia militia, to which is affixed a tintype carte-de-visite of Sibert. We have rarely seen Confederate orderly books on the market, and certainly not in manuscript form. Most Civil War orderly books consist of bound printed orders.