Although Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House in April, 1865, some Confederates refused to abandon their cause. Fallen Guidon, originally published in 1962 by Jack Rittenhouse's Stagecoach Press in 1962, is the gripping story of one such group of men who, rather than surrender, boldly decided to follow their cavalry flag or guidon south and transplant their imperialistic vision in the troubled soil of Mexico. This little-remembered episode of the Trans-Mississippi Civil War was written as a popular history by the late Edwin Adams Davis, a respected scholar of southern and Civil War history. General Jo Shelby had led the Missouri Cavalry Division through battles at Westport, Mine Creek, Newtonia, and elsewhere. Shelby's men were all recruits rather than draftees, fiercely loyal, and they followed the code of chivalry to a degree unusual even in the old South. While preparing to march against the Federals at Little Rock, they heard of Lee's surrender. In a meeting at Marshall, Texas, Shelby announced, We will stand together, we will keep our organization, our arms, our discipline, our hatred of oppression . . . that this Missouri Cavalry Division preferred exile to submission--death to dishonor. Having heard that the U.S. government wanted the Habsburg emperor Maximilian out of Mexico and that Lincoln liked the idea of ex-Confederates joining forces with Benito Juarez to oust Maximilian and his French military forces, Shelby formed his plan. Shelby believed he had found a way to save their honor and at the same time spread their lost southern empire to a new land, where riches and glory surely awaited them. Shelby and his men marched through Texas, stopping in Corsicana, Tyler, Waxahachie, Waco, Austin, Houston, and San Antonio, declaring martial law and forcibly quelling local outbreaks of looting and rioting where they found it. At the Rio Grande, in a funereal memorial, they buried their Confederate battle flag in the murky waters before heading into Mexico. Shelby's men did not want to support Benito Juarez's liberal guerrillas, however. Identifying themselves as imperialists, they wanted to fight gloriously for Emperor Maximilian. In pitched battles against the local Juaristas and isolated guerrillas and bandits, they spilled blood from Piedras Negras to Mexico City and even undertook the chivalrous and bloody rescue of a woman imprisoned in a hacienda. Once in Mexico City, Shelby's Iron Brigade discovered its march to have been futile, and in a bittersweet final review, Shelby said good-bye.

The discovery in 1938 of the diary and personal papers of William Johnson (ca. 1809-1851), a free Negro of Natchez, Mississippi, made possible the publication of this fascinating volume. Johnson's diary offers a firsthand account of a former slave who rose from harsh circumstances to become a successful businessman. It is also an intimate portrait of life and social relations in a southern town in the years leading up to the Civil War. A barber by trade, Johnson was also a landlord, moneylender, slave owner, and small farmer, and despite his colour he became a prominent, well-respected citizen of Natchez. Johnson kept a ledger on the various aspects of his thriving businesses, and in this ledger he also recorded his impressions of the daily occurrences of life around him. ""I am always ready for Anything,"" reads one of his entries for 1845. This dictum is borne out in his acutely observed accounts of births and deaths, weddings and elopements, political campaigns and conventions, races and cockfights, concerts and trials, balls and epidemics, all related with a naive yet passionate curiosity and with the private frankness of a man of colour denied a public outlet for his opinions. In a vividly colloquial voice, Johnson set down the whole of the Natchez scene for sixteen years. No other southern diary provides such a broad picture of numerous aspects of everyday life or reveals so many of the well-to-do free Negro's attitudes on timely questions. It is one of the most remarkable documents in American historiography.

In The Barber of Natchez, Edwin Adams Davis and William Ransom Hogan tell the remarkable story of William Johnson, a slave who rose to freedom, business success, and high community standing in the heart of the South, all before 1850. Emancipated as a young boy in 1820, Johnson became a barber's apprentice and later opened several profitable barber shops of his own. As his wealth grew, he expanded into real estate and acquired large tracts of nearby farm and timber land. The authors explore in detail Johnson's family, work, and social life, including his friendships with people of both races. They also examine his wanton murder and the resulting trial of the man accused of shooting him. More than the story of one individual, the narrative also offers compelling insight into the southern code of honor, the apprentice system, and the ownership of slaves by free blacks. Based on Johnson's two-thousand-page diary, letters, and business records, this extraordinary biography reveals the complicated life of a freedman in Mississippi and a new perspective on antebellum Natchez.