Originally published in 1875, George Cary Eggleston's memoir, which proved immensely popular among readers throughout the country, is a nostalgic, often amusing collection of essays based on the author's Civil War experiences. Eggleston describes life in Virginia before the war, offers glowing assessments of the men who made up the Confederate army and the women who stood behind them, satirizes the Confederacy's finances and its army's red tape, and recollects the war's end. He provides compelling portraits of his heroes from the war, lavishing praise on Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and especially Jeb Stuart. By 1905, A Rebel's Recollections had gone through four editions, suggesting how well it reflected the mood of the nation, which by then wanted to forget angry sectionalism and glorify the soldiers of both sides in an idealized view of the war.
Gaines M. Foster is T. Harry Williams Professor and chair of the history department at Louisiana State University and the author of Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South.
