Papers include instructions, 1857, to an overseer in Alabama concerning the management of slaves and a fragment of minutes of the first meeting of the Tombigbee Rangers, C.S.A., of which William Henry Sims of Mississippi was 1st sergeant. The diary was kept by William Henry Sims during his imprisonment in a Union Army hospital and military prisons in Tennessee and Kentucky. There are almost daily entries concerning prison conditions, groups interned there, soldier attitudes at the war's end, arrangements for taking loyalty oaths, and so forth. In addition to the diary, there are a few poems, addresses, and miscellaneous notes.
