Photograph of Micajah Woods, ca. 1903.

Micajah Woods, of "Holkham" in Ivy, Virginia, joined the Confederate Army in August 1861 at the age of seventeen. Under military age, he spent the winter of 1861-62 at the University and then joined the 2nd Virginia Cavalry. In 1863, he became a First Lieutenant in Thomas E. Jackson's Battery, Virginia Horse Artillery, and saw action at Gettysburg, New Market, and Cold Harbor. After the war Woods returned to the University and earned a Bachelor of Law degree. He practiced in Charlottesville and in 1870 became commonwealth attorney, a position held until his death 41 years later. Today he is remembered locally as the prosecuting attorney in the murder trial of Charlottesville mayor Samuel McCue and the father of Maud Coleman Woods, the first "Miss America."

In stark contrast to Kean's carefully composed work, Woods' small pocket diary contains a few sentences scrawled in pencil mark each day, with an occasional entry in ink. Like many battlefront diarists, Woods writes only of the action immediately surrounding him with no immediate sense of the overall battle. For the action at Cold Harbor, Woods records: "Moved to better position about 700 yds to rear and commenced fortifying with infantry line. Enemy advanced to within 500 yds on our front & opened tremendous sharp shooting. We gave them shell & canister--My gunner Wm Crist of my third gun killed almost instantly by a minieball a noble & faithful young man...."