A Flower at Elmira: The Prisoner of War Diary of Wilbur Wightman Gramling

I-want-to-go-home-so-bad. These forlorn words, expressing such homesickness, appear lengthwise within the right margin on the last page of Wilbur Wightman Gramling\u27s pocket diary, a day-by-day journal of his experiences while imprisoned at Elmira Prisoner-of-War (POW) Camp in New York during the Civil War. Struck by a minie ball in the right arm and captured at the Battle of the Wilderness on May 6, 1864, Gramling, a private in Florida\u27s 5th Infantry, spent eleven months at Elmira Prison. The journal he faithfully kept throughout his imprisonment is the only known existing document of this type written by a Florida soldier.