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Collection: LAY, HENRY CHAMPLIN, DIARY
Atlanta, Georgia, and City Point, Virginia
1864
Physical Description: 1 item, typescript diary.
Acquisition: From Biennial Reports: 1930-1932, presented by Reverend George
W. Lay, Rector of St. Mary's School, Raleigh, N. C.
Description: 3ishop Henry Champlin Lay (1823-1885), born Richmond, Virginia;
graduated University of Virginia and Theological Seminary, Alexandria,
Virginia; married Elizabeth W. Atkinson; lived Huntsville, Alabama; elected
Episcopal missionary bishop of Southwest (1859) (diocese limited to Arkansas
during Civil War); served as Confederate chaplain; later appointed bishop in
Easton, Maryland.
The original diary, "Two Months Within the Lines of the Enemy, 1864,"
is in the Henry C. lay Collection (3,500 items), Southern Historical
Collection, University of North Carolina. The 38-page typescript copy in
the North Carolina State Archives was explicated by his son, H. C. lay, in
1908-. ...
From mid-September to mid-November, 1864, the diary recounts the
journey to and from a personal visit behind Union lines to a friend in
Huntsville, Alabama. Lay spends an evening with General William T. Sher¬
man in Atlanta, and on the return trip Sherman routes him circuitously
around the pending march through Georgia to General Grant's headquarters
in City Point, Virginia. The highlights of the diary are the visits with
the two Generals, who are described and whose conversations are reported
in some detail. In a summary, Lay compares the North and the South and is
convinced of the necessity for southern independence.
Lay's son, in a prefatory note, states, "From the conversations
[with Grant] here related arose the. Hampton Roads Conference" held February 3,
1865, between Lincoln and Seward and the Confederates, Alexander Stephens,
R. M. T. Hunter, and J. S. Campbell. The conversations in the diary, which
may have precipitated the peace conference, also forecast its failure over
the independence issue.
The diary was published in the Atlantic Monthly, February and March, 1932.