Secret Yankees: The Union Circle in Confederate Atlanta
Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. First edition. First printing [stated]. Hardcover. xiii, 398 p. Illustrations. Notes. Index. This is one of the War/Society/Culture series. This study of the precarious predicament of Unionists who lived in Confederate Atlanta, Georgia during the Civil War contributes to a little-studied aspect of that war and conveys, further, its horrors and the suffering it brought forth. Some of the material is based on a diary, reproduced in the book, of a pro-Union woman. An intriguing story of loyalty and patriotism, Secret Yankees brings to life the adventures of Atlanta Unionists during the Civil War, offering a perspective on the conflict that previous accounts have ignored. ('There were no Unionists in Gone with the Wind, ' Dyer points out. ) Dyer draws on previously unpublished sources--including a long-lost diary and a work of purported fiction based closely on the experience of Cyrena Stone, a Vermont native-to recreate the drama, deprivation, and suspicion that marked the experience of the Union in the closing, and increasingly desperate, years of the war. Arrested on suspicion of spying (the penalty was death) but released by Southern authorities, her house destroyed by Union shelling during the vividly rendered fall of Atlanta, Cyrena Stone survived the war to see the triumph of the cause for which she had risked her life. More than the story of heroic individuals, Secret Yankees provides an illuminating account of personal travail in the Civil War and a thought-provoking exploration of the nature and meaning of national loyalty in wartime. Condition: Very good / very good.
Keywords: Unionists, Nedom Angier, Alfred Austell, Braxton Bragg, Thomas Crussell, James Dunning, Julius Hayden, Robert McCroskey, William Markham, Amherst Stone, Cyrena Stone, Alexander Wilson, Prisoners of War, Military Intelligence, Espionage, Spies
ISBN: 9780801861161
[Book #58508]
Price: $45.00