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About
On the one-hundred-fiftieth anniversary of the Civil War, award-winning author Frye Gaillard reflects on the war-and the way we remember it-through letters written by his family, including his great-great grandfather and his two sons, both of whom were Confederate officers. As Gaillard explains in his introductory essay, he came of age in a Southern generation that viewed the war as a glorious lost cause. But as he read through letters collected by members of his family, he confronted a far more sobering truth. "Oh, this terrible war," wrote his great-great-grandfather, Thomas Gaillard. "Who can measure the troubles-the affliction-it has brought upon us all?" To this real-time anguish in voices from the past, Gaillard offers a personal remembrance of the shadow of war and its place in the haunted identity of the South. "My own generation," he writes, "was, perhaps, the last that was raised on stories of gallantry and courage . . . Oddly, mine was also the one of the first generations to view the Civil War through the lens of civil rights-to see . . . connections and flaws in Southern history that earlier generations couldn't bear to face."
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Reviews
"The Gaillard family letters from the Civil War era and Frye Gaillard's contemporary introductory remarks provide a lens through which we can better see the inner lives of those who made a terrible choice in going to war to preserve the institution of slavery. This book serves as a cautionary tale that directs us to embrace the sacredness of all human life, not custom or community fervor or person
Sena Jeter Naslund, author of Four Spirits, Ahab's Wife, and Adam & Eve
"Frye Gaillard's excavation of what the American Civil War was actually like for his ancestors, his nimble parsing of myth and memory, creates an . . . unsettling effect. Little that he discovers fits the Lost Cause version of history that he once inherited, like family china, from his Southern elders -- a version that for better or worse lives with us still. Thus, as we read his remarkable book,
Steven Trout, director of the Center for War and Memory at the University of South Alabama
"For anyone drawn to Civil War history and to the conflict's continuing ramifications, this book is a gem to seek out and read."
Si Dunn, Books, Books & More (New) Books