A dramatic real-life adventure story, "Unspoiled Heart" chronicles the Civil War experiences of Charles P. Mattocks, a major in the Union Army of the Potomac. From 1863 to 1865, Mattocks kept a diary in which he meticulously recorded the everyday details of army politics and camplife and the excitement of commanding men in battle. At the tender age of twenty-three, this Bowdoin College graduate took successive command of the Seventeenth Maine and the famous First United States Sharpshooters. With an "unspoiled heart, " he fearlessly led his troops in the crucial battles of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg as well as in several minor skirmishes. During the Battle of the Wilderness, Mattocks was captured, imprisoned by the Confederates, and escaped into the mountains of North Carolina, where he was recaptured by Confederate Indians. After nine months in different Confederate prisons, Mattocks was exchanged in time to participate in the Battle of Sayler's Creek, in which his bravery earned him the Congressional Medal of Honor. Mattocks's journals are rich with insightful commentary, including details about the officers' prisons in Georgia and the Carolinas and about the anti-Confederate slaves and white Unionists who aided him in his escape. Of particular interest are his invaluable descriptions of Sayler's Creek, the last great battle involving the Army of the Potomac and one that has often been neglected in Civil War literature.

Unspoiled Heart: Journal Charles Mattocks 17Th Maine (Voices of the Civil War)

Biographies & Memoirs

Racine, Philip N.

Historical

Univ Tennessee Press

The journals of David Golightly Harris are a unique daily record of a fifteen-year span in the life of a Piedmont South Carolina farm family that owned ten slaves and cultivated one hundred acres.  Documents from small slaveholders are few, making these journals an invaluable source of information about the agricultural routines of a small antebellum farm as well as a revealing commentary on regional and national affairs, slavery, education, religion, family relationships, and community life.  An especially compelling feature of this book is its inclusion of writings by Harris's wife, Emily, who took over the journal when he went to war for the Confederacy in 1862. Recounting the trials of managing the farm and raising seven children in her husband's absence, Emily's words offer poignant insights into the daily struggles of those who tended the home front during the Civil War."Piedmont Farmer is one of those rare books that deserves a place alongside The Cotton Kingdom, My Bondage and My Freedom, The Children of Pride, Mary Chesnut's Civil War, and the recent Freedom volumes as an indispensable source for historians of the nineteenth-century South."—David C. Rankin, The Journal of Southern History"Harris's journals are important because they span the years before, during, and after the Civil War. . . . Philip N. Racine's annotations are extensive and extraordinarily rich in detail and insight. Enhanced with photographs, maps, and a comprehensive index, the Harris journals are not only a major contribution to southern history, but also they are a poignant view of agriculture and an explicit confirmation of slavery's burden."—David E. Schob, Illinois Historical JournalThe Editor: Philip N. Racine is Kenan Professor of History at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. He edited "Unspoiled Heart": The Journal of Charles Mattocks of the 17th Maine in the Voices of the Civil War series published by the University of Tennessee Press.

Piedmont Farmer: David Golightly Harris 1855-1870

Spartanburg County: A Pictorial History

History

Americas

Walsworth Pub. Co

Most of what we know about how the Civil War affected life in the Confederacy is related to cities, troop movements, battles, and prominent political, economic, or military leaders. Far less is known about the people who lived in small Southern towns remote from marching armies or battles. Philip N. Racine explores life in one such place―Spartanburg, South Carolina―in an effort to reshape the contours of that great conflict. By 1864 life in most of the Confederacy, but especially in rural towns, was characterized by scarcity, high prices, uncertainty, fear, and bad-tempered neighbors. Shortages of food were common. People lived with constant anxiety that a soldiering father or son would be killed or wounded. Taxes were high, inflation was rampant, good news was scarce and seemed to always be followed by bad. The slave population was growing restive as their masters' bad news was their good news. Army deserters were threatening lawlessness; accusations and vindictiveness colored the atmosphere and added to the anxiety, fear, and feeling of helplessness. Often people blamed their troubles on the Confederate government in faraway Richmond, Virginia. Racine provides insight into these events through personal stories: the plight of a slave; the struggles of a war widow managing her husband's farm, ten slaves, and seven children; and the trauma of a lowcountry refugee's having to forfeit a wealthy, aristocratic way of life and being thrust into relative poverty and an alien social world. All were part of the complexity of wartime Spartanburg District.

Living a Big War in a Small Place: Spartanburg, South Carolina, during the Confederacy

University of South Carolina Press

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