Being a soldier in the Continental army, Plumb Martin wrote down about his experiences in a diary that he kept for 7 years. This memoir is a brilliant first-person report of the Revolutionary War from which one can understand the life of a continental soldier. The story is full of realistic details though sometimes Plumb Martin embellished the events or told about events that did not take place in the real life.

In his memoir Joseph Plumb points out the differences between the colonists. He retells about the time when he was prisoned by “half New Englanders and half Pennsylvanians” (Martin, 1999, p.27) and that he “would rather be combating with a tribe of Indians than with the Southerners” (Martin, 1999, p.25). In their turn they call him “damn Yankee”, as Martin notes. He had many reasons not to like them, besides they were foreigners who did not know language well enough and who spoke English very bad.

The author portraits the war and the birth of the nation very realistically and in a detailed way. He clearly wants to avoid romantic or idealistic concepts concerning the war or the birth of the nation. Martin tries to show all the hardships of the war from the point of view of an average soldier who combated in that particular war, and gives his own opinion of the officers, of their ethnicity, geographical location or gender. He gives a detailed description of the war events, of the officers’ courage and bravery. Martin shows the acts of ordinary men who combated for freedom of their motherland and did everything that was in their power to protect their families from the enemies.