A man, his family, and his city, brought vividly to life. This
previously unpublished diary is the best surviving firsthand
account of life in Civil War - era Atlanta. Bookseller Samuel
Pearce Richards (1824-1910) kept a diary for sixty-seven years.
This volume excerpts the diary from October 1860, just before the
presidential election of Abraham Lincoln, through August 1865, when
the Richards family returned to Atlanta after being forced out by
Sherman's troops and spending a period of exile in New York City.
The Richards??i??i??' were among the last Confederate loyalists to
leave Atlanta. Sam's recollections of the Union bombardment, the
evacuation of the city, the looting of his store, and the influx of
Yankee forces are riveting. Sam was a Unionist until 1860, when his
sentiments shifted in favor of the Confederacy. However, as he
wrote in early 1862, he had ""no ambition to acquire military
renown and glory."" Likewise, Sam chafed at financial setbacks
caused by the war and at Confederate policies that seemed to limit
his freedom. Such conflicted attitudes come through even as Sam
writes about civic celebrations, benefit concerts, and the chaotic
optimism of life in a strategically critical rebel stronghold. He
also reflects with soberness on hospitals filled with wounded
soldiers, the threat of epidemics, inflation, and food shortages. A
man of deep faith who liked to attend churches all over town, Sam
often comments on Atlanta's religious life and grounds his defense
of slavery and secession in the Bible. Sam owned and rented slaves,
and his diary is a window into race relations at a time when the
end of slavery was no longer unthinkable. Perhaps most important,
the diary conveys the tenor of Sam's family life. Both Sam and his
wife, Sallie, came from families divided politically and
geographically by war. They feared for their children's health and
mourned for relatives wounded and killed in battle. The figures in
Sam Richards' ""Civil War Diary"" emerge as real people; the
intimate experience of the Civil War home front is conveyed with
great power.
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