General William Tecumseh Sherman said of Southern women, “You women are the toughest set I ever knew. The men would have given up long ago but for you. I believe you would keep this war up for thirty years.”

The great value of the present volume is that it was not written for an audience outside the unreconstructed south. Even after forty years, the embers of bitterness and defense of the “Lost Cause” echo in these uncensored pages.