Download or read book Emilie Davis s Civil War written by Judith Giesberg and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2016-06-08 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emilie Davis was a free African American woman who lived in Philadelphia during the Civil War. She worked as a seamstress, attended the Institute for Colored Youth, and was an active member of her community. She lived an average life in her day, but what sets her apart is that she kept a diary. Her daily entries from 1863 to 1865 touch on the momentous and the mundane: she discusses her own and her community’s reactions to events of the war, such as the Battle of Gettysburg, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the assassination of President Lincoln, as well as the minutiae of social life in Philadelphia’s black community. Her diaries allow the reader to experience the Civil War in “real time” and are a counterpoint to more widely known diaries of the period. Judith Giesberg has written an accessible introduction, situating Davis and her diaries within the historical, cultural, and political context of wartime Philadelphia. In addition to furnishing a new window through which to view the war’s major events, Davis’s diaries give us a rare look at how the war was experienced as a part of everyday life—how its dramatic turns and lulls and its pervasive, agonizing uncertainty affected a northern city with a vibrant black community.

Download or read book The War Outside My Window written by Janet Elizabeth Croon and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2018-06-01 with total page 489 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A remarkable account of the collapse of the Old South and the final years of a young boy’s privileged but afflicted life. LeRoy Wiley Gresham was born in 1847 to an affluent slave-holding family in Macon, Georgia. After a horrific leg injury left him an invalid, the educated, inquisitive, perceptive, and exceptionally witty twelve-year-old began keeping a diary in 1860—just as secession and the Civil War began tearing the country and his world apart. He continued to write even as his health deteriorated until both the war and his life ended in 1865. His unique manuscript of the demise of the Old South is published here for the first time in The War Outside My Window. LeRoy read books, devoured newspapers and magazines, listened to gossip, and discussed and debated important social and military issues with his parents and others. He wrote daily for five years, putting pen to paper with a vim and tongue-in-cheek vigor that impresses even now, more than 150 years later. His practical, philosophical, and occasionally Twain-like hilarious observations cover politics and the secession movement, the long and increasingly destructive Civil War, family pets, a wide variety of hobbies and interests, and what life was like at the center of a socially prominent wealthy family in the important Confederate manufacturing center of Macon. The young scribe often voiced concern about the family’s pair of plantations outside town, and recorded his interactions and relationships with servants as he pondered the fate of human bondage and his family’s declining fortunes. Unbeknownst to LeRoy, he was chronicling his own slow and painful descent toward death in tandem with the demise of the Southern Confederacy. He recorded—often in horrific detail—an increasingly painful and debilitating disease that robbed him of his childhood. The teenager’s declining health is a consistent thread coursing through his fascinating journals. “I feel more discouraged [and] less hopeful about getting well than I ever did before,” he wrote on March 17, 1863. “I am weaker and more helpless than I ever was.” Morphine and a score of other “remedies” did little to ease his suffering. Abscesses developed; nagging coughs and pain consumed him. Alternating between bouts of euphoria and despondency, he often wrote, “Saw off my leg.” The War Outside My Window, edited and annotated by Janet Croon with helpful footnotes and a detailed family biographical chart, captures the spirit and the character of a young privileged white teenager witnessing the demise of his world even as his own body slowly failed him. Just as Anne Frank has come down to us as the adolescent voice of World War II, LeRoy Gresham will now be remembered as the young voice of the Civil War South. Winner, 2018, The Douglas Southall Freeman Award

Download or read book Memoranda During the War written by Walt Whitman and published by Applewood Books. This book was released on 1990 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Civil War, from 1862-1865, Walt Whitman spent much of his time with wounded soldiers, both in the field and in the hospitals. The 40 notebooks he filled became the basis for the extraordinary diary of a medic in the Civil War.

Download or read book Diary of a Contraband written by William Benjamin Gould and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The heart of this book is the remarkable Civil War diary of the author’s great-grandfather, William Benjamin Gould, an escaped slave who served in the United States Navy from 1862 until the end of the war. The diary vividly records Gould’s activity as part of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron off the coast of North Carolina and Virginia; his visits to New York and Boston; the pursuit to Nova Scotia of a hijacked Confederate cruiser; and service in European waters pursuing Confederate ships constructed in Great Britain and France. Gould’s diary is one of only three known diaries of African American sailors in the Civil War. It is distinguished not only by its details and eloquent tone (often deliberately understated and sardonic), but also by its reflections on war, on race, on race relations in the Navy, and on what African Americans might expect after the war. The book includes introductory chapters that establish the context of the diary narrative, an annotated version of the diary, a brief account of Gould’s life in Massachusetts after the war, and William B. Gould IV’s thoughts about the legacy of his great-grandfather and his own journey of discovery in learning about this remarkable man.

Download or read book The Diary of a Civil War Bride written by Kristen Brill and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2017-10-18 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lucy Wood Butler's diary provides a compelling account of an ordinary woman's struggle to come to terms with realities of war on the Confederate home front. Married at the start of the war, she would become a widow by mid-1863; her account of life in the Confederacy explores her life in Virginia, her mourning period for her deceased husband, and her views on the waning prospect of Confederate victory. Now available in book form for the first time, The Diary of a Civil War Bride brings to light a vital archival resource that reveals the mindset of women in the Civil War South.

Download or read book The Civil War Diary of Freeman Colby Hardcover written by Marek Bennett and published by . This book was released on 2019-03-21 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marek Bennett's comics adaptation of this actual Civil War memoir brings to life the dry humor and grim conviction of teacher-turned-soldier Freeman Colby. Fiercely proud of his Granite State heritage, Freeman Colby bows to no one - not the rowdy students of his rural one-room schoolhouse, not the high-handed Union army officers in town, and certainly not those Rebel traitors causing all that trouble down South. But Colby needs work, and his ne'er-do-well little brother Newton needs looking after, so the boys enlist with a new regiment promising three years' pay and plenty of adventure in a growing war...

Download or read book Notes from a Colored Girl written by Karsonya Wise Whitehead and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This historical biography provides a scholarly analysis of the personal diaries of a young, freeborn mulatto woman during the Civil War years. In Notes from a Colored Girl, Karsonya Wise Whitehead examines the life and experiences of Emilie Frances Davis through a close reading of three pocket diaries she kept from 1863 to 1865. Whitehead explores Davis’s worldviews and politics, her perceptions of both public and private events, her personal relationships, and her place in Philadelphia’s free black community in the nineteenth century. The book also includes a six-chapter historical reconstruction of Davis’s life. While Davis’s entries provide brief, daily snapshots of her life, Whitehead interprets them in ways that illuminate nineteenth-century black American women’s experiences. Whitehead’s contribution of edited text and original narrative fills a void in scholarly documentation of women who dwelled in spaces between white elites, black entrepreneurs, and urban dwellers of every race and class. Drawing on scholarly traditions from history, literature, feminist studies, and sociolinguistics, Whitehead investigates Davis’s diary both as a complete literary artifact and in terms of her specific daily entries. With few primary sources written by black women during this time in history, Davis’s diary is a rare and extraordinarily valuable historical artifact.

Download or read book Civil War Medicine written by Shauna Devine and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-01 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An incredible resource for anyone interested in the human experience of the Civil War―as recorded by a medical professional tasked with saving lives.”—David Price, Executive Director of the National Museum of Civil War Medicine In this never before published diary, twenty-nine-year-old surgeon James Fulton transports readers into the harsh and deadly conditions of the Civil War as he struggles to save the lives of the patients under his care. Fulton joined a Union army volunteer regiment in 1862, only a year into the Civil War, and immediately began chronicling his experiences in a pocket diary. Despite his capture by the Confederate Army at Gettysburg and the confiscation of his medical tools, Fulton was able to keep his diary with him at all times. He provides a detailed account of the next two years, including his experiences treating the wounded and diseased during some of the most critical campaigns of the war, and his relationships with soldiers, their commanders, civilians, other health-care workers, and the opposing Confederate army. The diary also includes his notes on recipes for medical ailments from sore throats to syphilis. In addition to Fulton’s diary, editor Robert D. Hicks and experts in Civil War medicine provide context and additional information on the practice and development of medicine during the Civil War, including the technology and methods available at the time; the organization of military medicine; doctor-patient interactions; and the role of women as caregivers and relief workers. Civil War Medicine: A Surgeon’s Diary provides a compelling new account of the lives of soldiers during the Civil War and a doctor’s experience of one of the worst health crises ever faced by the United States.

Download or read book A Confederate Nurse written by Ada White Bacot and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 1994 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Civil War was the first major American conflict in which women nurses played a significant role. This diary records the daily experiences, hardships and joys of a Southern plantation owner and widow whose patriotism prompted her to care for confederate wounded.

Download or read book Little to Eat and Thin Mud to Drink written by Gary D. Joiner and published by Univ. of Tennessee Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Little to Eat and Thin Mud to Drink does more than just document the history of the Trans-Mississippi conflict of the Civil War. It goes much deeper, offering a profound, extended look into the innermost thoughts of the soldiers and civilians who experienced the events that took place in Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas. Gleaning from a rich body of rare journals, diaries, and letters, this groundbreaking book demonstrates the significant impact that military operations in this region had on the local population in years between 1863 and 1865. Readers will be introduced to the many different individuals who were touched by the campaign, both Confederate and Union. Ably edited by Joiner, a leading expert on the Trans-Mississippi conflict, and others, some of these manuscripts are witty, others somber, some written by Harvard- and Yale-educated aristocrats, others by barely literate farmers. All profoundly reflect their feelings regarding the extraordinary circumstances and events they witnessed. In Little to Eat and Thin Mud to Drink, readers will have access to the diary of James A. Jarratt, a Confederate sergeant whose cogent narratives dispute commonly held views of the Battle of Mansfield. Representing a much different point of view is the diary of Private Julius Knapp, whose lengthy diary sheds light on the life of a Northern soldier fighting in the ill-fated Union march through Louisiana in 1864. A rare glimpse into the diary of a Southern woman is offered through the fascinating and melancholy musings of plantation belle Sidney Harding. Readers will also encounter the private letters of a French prince turned Confederate officer; of Elizabeth Jane Samford Fullilove, the angst-ridden wife of a Confederate soldier; and many others. These first-person narratives vividly bring to life the individuals who lived through this important, but often neglected, period in Civil War history. Little to Eat and Thin Mud to Drink will engross anyone interested in exploring the human side of the Civil War. Gary Joiner is an assistant professor of history at Louisiana State University in Shreveport and the director of the Red River Regional Studies Center at LSUS. His books include One Damn Blunder from Beginning to End: The Red River Campaign of 1864 and Union Failure in the West and Through the Howling Wilderness: The 1864 Red River Campaign and Union Failure in the West. He is also the coeditor, with Marilyn S. Joiner and Clifton D. Cardin, of another volume in the Voices of the Civil War series, No Pardons to Ask, nor Apologies to Make: The Journal of William Henry King, Gray's 28th Louisiana Infantry Battalion.

Download or read book A Confederate Girl s Diary written by Sarah Morgan Dawson and published by . This book was released on 1913 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sarah Morgan Dawson lived in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, at the outbreak of the American Civil War. In March 1862, she began to record her thoughts about the war in a diary-- thoughts about the loss of friends killed in battle and the occupation of her home by Federal troops. Her devotion to the South was unwavering and her emotions real and uncensored. A true classic.

Download or read book The Richmond Campaign of 1862 written by Gary W. Gallagher and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2000 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whiting's Confederate division in the battle of Gaines's Mill, the role of artillery in the battle of Malvern Hill, and the efforts of Radical Republicans in the North to use the Richmond campaign to rally support for emancipation."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book Diary of a Yankee Engineer written by John Henry Westervelt and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Diary of a Yankee Engineer is a poignant firsthand account of a soldier's experiences during the Civil War. Westervelt's words, intended not for the history books but for the education of his young son, present an authentic and humble vision of military life and of the North's struggle in the Civil War.

Download or read book My Diary North and South written by Sir William Howard Russell and published by . This book was released on 1863 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses problems of America.

Download or read book The Civil War Diary of Gideon Welles Lincoln s Secretary of the Navy written by Gideon Welles and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2014-08-15 with total page 881 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gideon Welles’s 1861 appointment as secretary of the navy placed him at the hub of Union planning for the Civil War and in the midst of the powerful personalities vying for influence in Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet. Although Welles initially knew little of naval matters, he rebuilt a service depleted by Confederate defections, planned actions that gave the Union badly needed victories in the war’s early days, and oversaw a blockade that weakened the South’s economy. Perhaps the hardest-working member of the cabinet, Welles still found time to keep a detailed diary that has become one of the key documents for understanding the inner workings of the Lincoln administration. In this new edition, William E. and Erica L. Gienapp have restored Welles’s original observations, gleaned from the manuscript diaries at the Library of Congress and freed from his many later revisions, so that the reader can experience what he wrote in the moment. With his vitriolic pen, Welles captures the bitter disputes over strategy and war aims, lacerates colleagues from Secretary of State William H. Seward to General-in-Chief Henry Halleck, and condemns the actions of the self-serving southern elite he sees as responsible for the war. He just as easily waxes eloquent about the Navy's wartime achievements, extols the virtues of Lincoln, and drops in a tidbit of Washington gossip. Carefully edited and extensively annotated, this edition contains a wealth of supplementary material. The appendixes include short biographies of the members of Lincoln’s cabinet, the retrospective Welles wrote after leaving office covering the period missing from the diary proper, and important letters regarding naval matters and international law.

Download or read book For Cause and Comrades written by James M. McPherson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1997-04-03 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: General John A. Wickham, commander of the famous 101st Airborne Division in the 1970s and subsequently Army Chief of Staff, once visited Antietam battlefield. Gazing at Bloody Lane where, in 1862, several Union assaults were brutally repulsed before they finally broke through, he marveled, "You couldn't get American soldiers today to make an attack like that." Why did those men risk certain death, over and over again, through countless bloody battles and four long, awful years ? Why did the conventional wisdom -- that soldiers become increasingly cynical and disillusioned as war progresses -- not hold true in the Civil War? It is to this question--why did they fight--that James McPherson, America's preeminent Civil War historian, now turns his attention. He shows that, contrary to what many scholars believe, the soldiers of the Civil War remained powerfully convinced of the ideals for which they fought throughout the conflict. Motivated by duty and honor, and often by religious faith, these men wrote frequently of their firm belief in the cause for which they fought: the principles of liberty, freedom, justice, and patriotism. Soldiers on both sides harkened back to the Founding Fathers, and the ideals of the American Revolution. They fought to defend their country, either the Union--"the best Government ever made"--or the Confederate states, where their very homes and families were under siege. And they fought to defend their honor and manhood. "I should not lik to go home with the name of a couhard," one Massachusetts private wrote, and another private from Ohio said, "My wife would sooner hear of my death than my disgrace." Even after three years of bloody battles, more than half of the Union soldiers reenlisted voluntarily. "While duty calls me here and my country demands my services I should be willing to make the sacrifice," one man wrote to his protesting parents. And another soldier said simply, "I still love my country." McPherson draws on more than 25,000 letters and nearly 250 private diaries from men on both sides. Civil War soldiers were among the most literate soldiers in history, and most of them wrote home frequently, as it was the only way for them to keep in touch with homes that many of them had left for the first time in their lives. Significantly, their letters were also uncensored by military authorities, and are uniquely frank in their criticism and detailed in their reports of marches and battles, relations between officers and men, political debates, and morale. For Cause and Comrades lets these soldiers tell their own stories in their own words to create an account that is both deeply moving and far truer than most books on war. Battle Cry of Freedom, McPherson's Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Civil War, was a national bestseller that Hugh Brogan, in The New York Times, called "history writing of the highest order." For Cause and Comrades deserves similar accolades, as McPherson's masterful prose and the soldiers' own words combine to create both an important book on an often-overlooked aspect of our bloody Civil War, and a powerfully moving account of the men who fought it.

Download or read book The Diary of Nannie Haskins Williams written by Nannie Haskins Williams and published by Univ. of Tennessee Press. This book was released on 2014-04-09 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1863, while living in Clarksville, Tennessee, Martha Ann Haskins, known to friends and family as Nannie, began a diary. This document provides valuable insights into the conditions in occupied Middle Tennessee. A young, elite Confederate sympathizer, Nannie was on the cusp of adulthood with the expectation of becoming a mistress in a slaveholding society. The war ended this prospect, and her life was forever changed. Though this is the first time the diaries have been published in full, they are well known among Civil War scholars, and voice-overs from them were used in Ken Burns's PBS program "The Civil War." Sixteen-year-old Nannie had to come to terms with Union occupation very early in the war. Amid school assignments, young friendship, social events, worries about her marital prospects, and tension with her mother, Nannie's entries also mixed information about battles, neighbors wounded in combat, U.S. Colored troops, and lawlessness in the surrounding countryside. Providing rare detail about daily life in an occupied city, Nannie's diary poignantly recounts how she and those around her continued to fight, long after the war was over, to maintain their lives in a war-torn community. Though numerous women's Civil War diaries exist, Nannie's is unique in that she also recounts her postwar life and the unexpected financial struggles she and her family experienced in the post-Reconstruction South. Nannie represents a generation of young women born into a society based on slavery but who faced mature adulthood in an entirely new world of decreasing farm values, increasing industrialization, and young women entering the workforce.--From publisher description.