Four Years in Rebel Capitals: An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death

"I leave it to men's charitable speeches, to foreign, nations and to the next ages." — Francis Bacon. MOBILE, ALA. THE GOSSIP PRINTING COMPANY. 1890. Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1890, By THE GOSSIP PRINTING COMPANY, In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. TO MY VALUED FRIEND, MRS. AUGUSTA EVANS WILSON, AS ONE LITTLE TOKEN OF APPRECIATION OF A LIFE-WORK DEDICATE TO HER SEX, TO HER SECTION AND TO TRUTH, THESE SKETCHES OF LIFE BEHIND OUR CHINESE WALL ARE INSCRIBED. Transcriber's Note: The advertisement and press comments for the author's book Juny: or Only One Girl's Story has been moved to the end of this text. IN PLACE OF PREFACE. Fortunate, indeed, is the reader who takes up a volume without preface; of which the persons are left to enact their own drama and the author does not come before the curtain, like the chorus of Greek tragedy, to speak for them. But, in printing the pages that follow, it may seem needful to ask that they be taken for what they are; simple sketches of the inner life of "Rebeldom"—behind its Chinese wall of wood and steel—during those unexampled four years of its existence. Written almost immediately after the war, from notes and recollections gathered during its most trying scenes, these papers are now revised, condensed and formulated for the first time. In years past, some of their crude predecessors have appeared—as random articles—in the columns of the Mobile Sunday Times , Appleton's Journal , the Louisville Courier-Journal , the Philadelphia Times and other publications. Even in their present condensation and revision, they claim only to be simple memoranda of the result of great events; and of their reaction upon the mental and moral tone of the southern people, rather than a record of those events themselves. This volume aspires neither to the height of history, nor to the depths of political analysis; for it may still be too early for either, or for both, of these. Equally has it resisted temptation to touch on many topics—not strictly belonging inside the Southern Capitals—still vexed by political agitation, or personal interest. These, if unsettled by dire arbitrament of the sword, must be left to Time and his best coadjutor, "sober second-thought." Campaigns and battles have already surfeited most readers; and their details—usually so incorrectly stated by the inexpert—have little to…