This was a gift given to me long ago. The recent edition, shown above was published by Barnes and Noble. I have the 1974 edition from Greenwood Press. I'm registering my copy here in bookcrossing because this is a rather obscure book now. Bell Irvin Wiley, a noted military history scholar, was alive and teaching at Atlanta's Emory University while I was growing up in Georgia. He wrote many books on the topic of "the War." Born in rural Tennessee in 1906, Wiley's research primarily focused on the history of the common people of the South during the 19th Century. His book on "Billy Yank" was an exception. It looked at the lives of the enlisted men of the Federal troops. This book features three wives of the leaders of the Confederacy, all very intelligent and well-educated. Wiley earned his bachelor of arts at Ashbury College in 1928 and his PhD from Yale University in 1933. He became a professor of history at what is now The University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg in 1934. He was there until 1943 and moved to Louisiana State University in 1953. He left that appointment in 1959 and joined the staff of Emory University in 1960. He remained at Emory through 1974. He published several popular books. I am most interested in his book Southern Negroes, 1861-1865, which was based upon his Yale dissertation. It looked carefully at what actually happened to the liberated slaves and how they coped with freedom. Wiley died in 1980. He was a beloved teacher.

Like Wiley I am a West Tennessee native--and very proud of that. I am going on a journey back to my paternal grandmother's native town, Henry, TN and just happened to notice that there is a BookCrossing Little Free Library there. That seems like a safe place to contribute this book to the BookCrossing Wild. My West Tennessee great-great grandfather fought here in Georgia for the Confederacy. He was from Henry. As I delve into history, I find more and more courageous Confederate Women. Here in north Georgia there was Jane Green. She and her family had fled their home for the Battle of Resaca. When they returned. She found numerous bodies of Confederate soldiers buried in barely decent shallow graves. She asked her father to donate land for a cemetery. She, her sister and servants buried many of those men, who died at Resaca and were from towns and communities all over the South. For that she was admitted to the United Daughters of the Confederacy for her own service.

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