DOVER BOOKS ON AMERICANA
LEWIS AND CLARK AND THE IMAGE OF THE AMERICAN NORTHWEST, John Logan Allen. (0-486-26914-0)
THE GIFT TO BE SIMPLE, Edward D. Andrews. (0-486-20022-1)
THE PEOPLE CALLED SHAKERS, Edward D. Andrews. (0-486-21081-2)
WORK AND WORSHIP AMONG THE SHAKERS, Edward D. Andrews & Faith Andrews. (0-486-24382-6)
THE CHICAGO WORLDS FAIR OF 1893: A PHOTOGRAPHIC RECORD, Stanley Appelbaum (ed.). (0-486-23990-X)
AMERICA As SEEN BY ITS FIRST EXPLORERS, John Bakeless. (0-486-26031-3)
PHOTOGRAPHIC VIEWS OF SHERMANS CAMPAIGN, George N. Barnard. (0-486-23445-2)
TRAVELS, William Bartram. (0-486-20013-2)
BOY SCOUTS HANDBOOK: THE FIRST EDITION, 1911, The Boy Scouts of America. (0-486-43991-7)
WILLIAM BYRDS HISTORIES OF THE DIVIDING LINE BETWIXT VIRGINIA AND NORTH CAROLINA, William Byrd. (0-486-25553-0)
DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN PORTRAITS, Hayward Cirker and Blanche Cirker (eds.). (0-486-21823-6) Clothbound
LOST GOLD AND SILVER MINES OF THE SOUTHWEST, Eugene L. Controtto. (0-486-29275-4)
EVERY DAY LIFE IN THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY COLONY, George Francis Dow. (0-486-25565-4)
THE COWBOYS OWN BRAND BOOK, Duncan Emrich. (0-486-28806-4)
RALPH WALDO EMERSON, O.W. Firkins. (0-486-41100-1)
CIVIL WAR ETCHINGS, Edwin Forbes. (0-486-28043-8)
AMERICAN CIRCUS POSTERS IN FULL COLOR, Charles Philip Fox. (0-486-23693-5)
THE MISSISSIPPI STEAMBOAT ERA IN HISTORIC PHOTOGRAPHS: NATCHEZ TO NEW ORLEANS, 18701920, Joan W. Gandy and Thomas H. Gandy. (0-486-25260-4)
PHOTOGRAPHIC SKETCHBOOK OF THE CIVIL WAR, Alexander Gardner. (0-486-22731-6)
AMERICAN REVOLUTION: A PICTURE SOURCEBOOK, John Grafton. (0-486-23226-3)
PERSONAL MEMOIRS OF U.S. GRANT, Ulysses Simpson Grant. (0-486-28587-1)
HISTORIC HOMES OF THE AMERICAN PRESIDENTS, SECOND REVISED EDITION, Irvin Haas. (0-486-26751-2)
A BRIEFE AND TRUE REPORT OF THE NEW FOUND LAND OF VIRGINIA, Thomas Harriot. (0-486-21092-8)
THE CONFEDERATE READER: HOW THE SOUTH SAW THE WAR, Richard B. Harwell (ed.). (0-486-25980-3)
UTOPIAN COMMUNITIES IN AMERICA, 16801880, Mark Holloway. (0-486-21593-8)
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THOMAS JEFFERSON, Thomas Jefferson. (0-486-44289-6)
THE BUILDING OF THE PANAMA CANAL IN HISTORIC PHOTOGRAPHS, Ulrich Keller. (0-486-24408-3)
Bibliographical Note
This Dover edition, first published in 1995, is an unabridged and unaltered republication of the work originally published in 1961 by The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
True tales of the South at war: how soldiers fought and families lived, 18611865 /
collected and edited by Clarence Poe with Betsy Seymour.Dover ed.
p. cm.
Originally published: Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961.
Includes index.
9780486139319
1. United StatesHistoryCivil War, 18611865Personal narratives, Confederate. 2. Confederate States of AmericaHistorySources. I. Poe, Clarence Hamilton, 1881- . II. Seymour, Betsy.
E605.T77 1995
973.782dc20
94-34997
CIP
Manufactured in the United States of America
Dover Publications, Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, N.Y. 11501
This volume is dedicated
to one large group I would especially honor
and to the memory of
a soldier-father and a soldier-son
To ALL MEN AND WOMEN
who share the rich heritage of descent from, or kinship with, any of the heroic men and women who served in one of the worlds greatest wars, 1861-1865.
To WILLIAM BAXTER POE, 1839-1907,
who had opposed secession but, when he thought his state unconstitutionally invaded, served the Confederacy until its final downfall.
To WILLIAM DISMUKES POE, 1915-1958,
who hated all war, but to help prevent the threatened world-domination of Hitlerism, served with the forces of Freedom in World War II until their final victory.
Foreword
WALTER PAGE ONCE SAID, I WISH I COULD HAVE THIS AS MY epitaph: Here Lies the Man Who Killed the Preface!
Nevertheless may we not reasonably say that every prospective reader is entitled to ask about any book, Who wrote it, why and how? Such questions about this volume I shall now try to answer.
I am myself the son of a Confederate soldier-farmer who survived the WarI am named for a Confederate who did not surviveand for sixty years have tried to preserve significant memories and documents of Southerners in warin my youth for several years as secretary and later president of our state historical association and ever since as an editor and individual. I have talked with Confederates who saw Sumter fired on and with others who drank with Lee the bitter dregs of defeat at Appomattox. More importantly, a year ago after I made an appeal to 1,400,000 subscribing families to The Progressive Farmer magazine, hundreds of persons from Maryland to Texas inclusive sent me valuable Civil War letters, diaries, and reminiscences with heartwarming expressions of a desire to help me. (And having now uttered the words Civil War, let me explain that I do so because it is now so generally accepted in all sections and because it represents a pleasant retreat on the part of our Northern friends from their original official phrase, The War of the Rebellion.)
My almost lifelong effort to preserve war memories I have made because of these three strong convictions: (1) if your grandfather or any other kinsman served in the Civil War then he fought in a war as great and historic as any ever waged by Caesar, Alexander, Hannibal, or Napoleon; (2) that so competent a student and writer of history as Theodore Roosevelt was right when he said, The world has never seen better soldiers than those who followed Lee, and (3) that this war was sustained by women no less heroic than the men.
Another compelling reason for my interest in studying and preserving our war history is that (born in January, 1881) I grew up with Confederate soldiers all around me, and kept up my contacts and interest as long as any lived. My earliest recollections are of words associated with my fathers war serviceSeven Pines, Petersburg, Fredericksburg, Pocataligo, Charlestonand gangrene! My mothers interest centered in Vicksburg because there her only brother and four Mississippi cousins endured one of the most appalling and soul-testing sieges our New World has ever known. And what a rare privilege it was when I once heard Mrs. Stonewall Jackson talk of her hero husband when I spent an evening with her at the home of her granddaughterand another evening I spent with the widow of General William D. Pender (killed at Gettysburg at age 29, the youngest major general in the Confederate Army) who was herself a cousin of my mothers.
And so this volume came into being. Maybe it will prove to be the nearest approach to the book the mythical Southern scholar wanted to see An Impartial History of The Civil WarWritten From the Southern Point of View! It is at any rate a book by Southerners themselvesabout soldiers who did the doing, daring, and dying at the front, the wives and others who kept the home fires burning, the children and grandchildren who later heard the stories of the old folks. Much of it is first handletters written on the battlefield or in prison or hospital, diaries of day to day life behind the lines. Some of it is second and third hand (but with credibility scrupulously considered)and though such material may seem less valuable to the historian, I think stories and local traditions may be as true to the spirit of these stirring times as first-hand documents.
