Civil War diaries / George Templeton Strong ; Geoff Wisner, editor.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Strong, George Templeton, 1820-1875, author.

Contributor:

Wisner, Geoff, editor.

Series:

Library of America ; 396.

The Library of America ; 396

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Strong, George Templeton, 1820-1875--Diaries.

Strong, George Templeton.

United States--Politics and government--19th century.

United States.

New York (N.Y.)--Social life and customs--19th century.

New York (N.Y.).

United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Personal narratives.

New York (N.Y.)--Personal narratives.

Genre:

diaries.

Diaries.

Personal narratives.

Physical Description:

885 pages ; 21 cm

Place of Publication:

New York, New York : The Library of America, 2025

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

"The Civil War comes alive in this fully restored, 900-page selected edition of the diaries of one of its keenest observers. When Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, the New York attorney George Templeton Strong (1820-1875) had been keeping an extensive diary for decades, recording the dynamic life of nineteenth-century Manhattan and the gathering national storm with an extraordinarily astute eye. With the coming of the Civil War, he dedicated himself to the Union cause, helping to fund a New York regiment and serving on the U.S. Sanitary Commission. Strong's diary entries from these years tell a riveting story of the country's most searing conflict in all its day-to-day uncertainty. His eyewitness accounts -- of the 1863 Draft Riots, field hospitals teeming with wounded men, and meetings with leaders such as Grant and Lincoln -- are remarkably vivid and suffused with novelistic detail. The diary also traces Strong's evolving view of the rough-hewn president as a political and moral leader, which charts the larger national realization of Lincoln's greatness. Always passionate, sometimes mercurial in his responses to the war's developments, Strong emerges as an unforgettable, three-dimensional character through his diary, whether venting his outrage at Britain's support for the Confederacy ("So much for British philanthropy & humanity... I have always been Anglophile & Anglomaniac, but I am disillusionated now") or giving voice to his admiration for his wife ("a very great little woman!") while she engages in relief work on Union hospital ships. Strong was perhaps the most trenchant civilian observer of the experience of the Civil War in the North, particularly attuned to the country's shifting moods, to "the great mass of selfishness, frivolity, invincible prejudice and indifference to national life" that hampered the Union war effort. But while Strong's reflections on the war and the political situation are valuable as a barometer of "the pulse of public opinion" in the North, as the historian James M. McPherson writes, they also reveal the singular intelligence and engaging style of an extraordinary American writer. Carefully selected and rigorously faithful to Strong's handwritten diaries, this Library of America edition presents an entirely new transcription of Strong's text, superseding the only previous version, published in 1952 and now long out of print. Nearly half the writings included here have never before been transcribed for publication. Detailed notes provide useful guidance to Strong's references to his family and social circle, literary allusions, and incidents from the war."--from the inside front and back flaps.

Contents:

1860

1861

1862

1863

1864

1865

Chronology

Note on the Texts

Notes

General Index

Regimental Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

159853825X

9781598538250

OCLC:

1499565316