Although modern authors continually produce important studies of the War Between the States, the firsthand accounts of those who were in the conflict remain the most valuable tools for understanding. This collection of letters and diaries provides glimpses into the lives of a diverse group of South Carolinians.

Among the seventeen accounts are the voices of women, including a Confederate spy; of officers like Captain Obidiah Hardin, who left his beloved Palmetto State to fight and die in Virginia before the war was even a year old; and of common men, like German immigrant Augustus Franks, whose love for his adopted state compelled him to staunchly defend the Confederacy. Collected from the archives of Winthrop University, these remarkable documents give voices and faces to the war as it affected South Carolina and her citizens.