Among the many extant volumes of Civil War correspondence penned by military men, few can boast of the writing quality of Dear Courier: The Civil War Correspondence of Editor Melvin Dwinell. This Yankee-turned-Rebel was both fighter and journalist: second lieutenant of the Rome Light Guards and editor of the Rome Courier.

Born in East Calais, Vermont, in 1825, Melvin Dwinell came to the South and was won over to its way of life. He soon found his calling in journalism, purchasing the Rome (Georgia) Courier and serving as its editor. Though he initially opposed Georgia’s immediate secession, Dwinell fully supported his adopted state’s cause, proclaiming that “a great and glorious Confederacy would arise from the ashes of the United States.”

At the outbreak of the war, Dwinell joined the Eighth Georgia Infantry and began an almost weekly correspondence published in his newspaper. The editor’s letters provide vivid descriptions of some of the most important campaigns of the Civil War. Dwinell’s lively account of the “most glorious victory” at Manassas surely delighted his readers, though the list of casualties from the area would have proved sobering. Wounded at Gettysburg in 1863, Dwinell openly described the heavy price paid by the Confederacy in rather a different tone: “The carnage was greater probably than on any other field since the commencement of this wicked war.”

Dwinell resigned his position as second lieutenant to run for the Georgia legislature, where he served until the state was overrun by the Union army. Dwinell was one of the first in Floyd County to take the oath of allegiance to the U.S. Constitution following Confederate defeat. Scholars have drawn upon Melvin Dwinell’s accounts because of the author’s grasp of strategy, strong writing skills, and journalistic instincts. Dear Courier will appeal to those interested in the campaigns of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, as well as those looking for accessible primary documents about the Civil War.

In a series of columns published in the African American newspaper The Christian Recorder, the young, charismatic preacher Henry McNeal Turner described his experience of the Civil War, first from the perspective of a civilian observer in Washington, D.C., and later, as one of the Union army’s first black chaplains.

 

In the halls of Congress, Turner witnessed the debates surrounding emancipation and black enlistment. As army chaplain, Turner dodged “grape” and cannon, comforted the sick and wounded, and settled disputes between white southerners and their former slaves. He was dismayed by the destruction left by Sherman’s army in the Carolinas, but buoyed by the bravery displayed by black soldiers in battle. After the war ended, he helped establish churches and schools for the freedmen, who previously had been prohibited from attending either.

 

Throughout his columns, Turner evinces his firm belief in the absolute equality of blacks with whites, and insists on civil rights for all black citizens. In vivid, detailed prose, laced with a combination of trenchant commentary and self-deprecating humor, Turner established himself as more than an observer: he became a distinctive and authoritative voice for the black community, and a leader in the African Methodist Episcopal church. After Reconstruction failed, Turner became disillusioned with the American dream and became a vocal advocate of black emigration to Africa, prefiguring black nationalists such as Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X. Here, however, we see Turner’s youthful exuberance and optimism, and his open-eyed wonder at the momentous changes taking place in American society.

 

Well-known in his day, Turner has been relegated to the fringes of African American history, in large part because neither his views nor the forms in which he expressed them were recognized by either the black or white elite. With an introduction by Jean Lee Cole and a foreword by Aaron Sheehan-Dean, Freedom’s Witness: The Civil War Correspondence of Henry McNeal Turner restores this important figure to the historical and literary record.

This collection of letters written between Theophilus and Harriet Perry during the Civil War provides an intimate, firsthand account of the effect of the war on one young couple. Perry was an officer with the 28th Texas Cavalry, a unit that campaigned in Arkansas and Louisiana as part of the division known as “Walker’s Greyhounds.” His letters describe his service in a highly literate style that is unusual for Confederate accounts. He documents a number of important events, including his experiences as a detached officer in Arkansas in the winter of 1862–63, the attempt to relieve the siege of Vicksburg, mutiny in his regiment, and the Red River campaign, just before he was killed in the battle of Pleasant Hill. Harriet’s writings allow the reader to witness the everyday life of an upper-class woman enduring home front deprivations, facing the hardships and fears of childbearing and childrearing alone, and coping with other challenges resulting from her husband’s absence.