Presented here are excerpts from diaries and letters written by Southern women from different walks of life and areas of the country. Mary White, a fifteen-year-old girl, attempted to get through the blockade in Wilmington, North Carolina; Nancy Jones lived in fear amid the violence that rocked Missouri and saw her close friends and family murdered and her young son taken prisoner by the Yankees; Sarah Dandridge Duval and her family were refugees living near Richmond, Virginia.

The book includes personal reminiscences from Union and Confederate women living in Winchester, Virginia, a town that reportedly changed hands 76 times during the war, and the reactions of Southern women to the surrender at Appomattox.