Book Description

Written by Judith McGuire, originally intended only for members of the family who were too young to remember these days, was first published in 1867. This noble southern lady recorded day-to-day happenings as she wandered across Virginia. Concerned that in future histories her grandchildren would be told that their ancestors were "tyrants to their servants," and "traitors to their country," she recorded in her diary more than enough proof of the truth.The late celebrated and Rev. Stuart Robinson wrote of it in a Louisville paper: "This has proved to us a most fascinating volume. It is the diary of a lady, evidently a thoughtful, refined, eminently Christian matron, kept for the benefit of her grandchildren, from May, 1861, when she was obliged to leave her home by the advent of Federal troops to Alexandria, Va., on through all the days of her sojourn at Winchester, Richmond, and elsewhere in Virginia, till the surrender of Generals Lee and Johnston, in April, 1865. . . . The reading of a dozen pages of this Diary make it sufficiently manifest that this gallery of 'inside views' of the Southern public opinion and the Southern heart during the memorable era of the civil war, are pictures taken from nature, and that, too, photographically-these leaves being but the plates upon which the thoughts and emotions shadowed themselves, and were caught as they arose day by day.From the Richmond Enquirer and Examiner, Friday morning, January 19, 1868: "The 'Diary of a Refugee' is a work unpretending in its character, but of rare literary merit, and of the deepest interest. It was written without any design of publication, but to preserve a faithful record, for the benefit of the many young friends and near relations of the authoress. No true-hearted Virginian can read it without the deepest emotion, and an interest far surpassing that of the most exciting romance. In truth, it is the best history of the war in Virginia, or of Virginia during the war, that has been written, no other authors having given to the passing transactions the freshness of reality by recording them as they passed. The style is animated, graceful and chaste. The book is a lively picture of the inner life of the Confederates during the war; of their hopes and fears, their joys and sorrows, through the eventful struggle. With all the personal detail is mingled a faithful account of almost every important event, from the firing of the first gun at Sumter to the surrender of Gen. Johnston.''"The Diary of a Refugee During the War." From Southern Society, Baltimore: "This work is, as a whole, a more faithful representation of the inner life of the Confederates-that life which is not shown in histories, but felt in the heart, and expressed from the lips, 'when friend holds fellowship with friend'-than any publication which we have seen since the close of the wa