William Howard Russell's Civil War: Private Diary and Letters, 1861-1862 - Softcover

Russell, William Howard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0820332003 ISBN 13: 9780820332000

Publisher: University of Georgia Press, 2008

Synopsis

Having won renown in the 1850s for his vivid warfront dispatches from the Crimea, William Howard Russell was the most celebrated foreign journalist in America during the first year of the Civil War. As a special correspondent for The Times of London, Russell was charged with explaining the American crisis to a British audience, but his reports also had great impact in America. They so alienated both sides, North and South, that Russell was forced to return to England prematurely in April 1862.

My Diary North and South (1863), Russell's published account of his visit, remains a classic of Civil War literature. It was not in fact a diary but a narrative reconstruction of the author's journeys and observations based on his private notebooks and published dispatches. Despite his severe criticisms of American society and conduct, Russell offered in that work generally sympathetic characterizations of the Northern and Southern leadership during the war. In this new volume, Martin Crawford brings together the journalist's original diary and a selection of his private correspondence to resurrect the fully uninhibited Russell and to provide, accordingly, a true documentary record of this important visitor's first impressions of America during the early months of its greatest crisis.

Over the course of his American visit, Russell traveled widely throughout the Union and the new Confederacy, meeting political and social leaders on both sides. Included here are spontaneous―and often unflattering―comments on such prominent figures as William H. Seward, Jefferson Davis, Mary Todd Lincoln, and George B. McClellan, as well as quick sketches of New York, Washington, New Orleans, and other cities. Also revealed for the first time are the anxiety and despair that Russell experienced during his American visit―a state induced by his own self-doubt, by concern over the health and situation of his wife in England, and, finally, by the bitter criticism he received in the United States over his reports.

A sometimes vain and pompous figure, Russell also emerges here as an individual of exceptionally tough spirit―a man who abhorred slavery and remained convinced of the essential rectitude of the Northern cause even as he criticized Northern leaders, their lack of preparedness for war, and the apparent disunity of the Northern population.

About this title

About the Author

MARTIN CRAWFORD is a professor of Anglo-American history at Keele University. His books include Liberating Sojourn, Reading Southern Poverty between the Wars (both Georgia), and Ashe County's Civil War.

From Publishers Weekly

These are the notes on which the Times of London's crack war correspondent based his polished, coherent book of the first year of the Civil War, My Diary North and South , which made enemies of Americans on both sides of the struggle and influenced British opinion of the conflict. Here too are Russell's unvarnished and unedited first impressions of food, fashions, inns, streets, culture, fighting men, issues and politicians. He dined with Seward, met Lincoln and MacClellan, traveled from North to South, inspected jails, visited cotton fields and battle sites, listened to talk about "breeding Negroes," and was hosted by the elite and the common folk. Although many of these notes are too roughly cast to be useful, there are gems of detail among them--omitted in his account--which illuminate the times and provide a portrait of the eccentric, sophisticated and informed reporter. The splendid biographical sketch of Russell and the impact of his published observations supplied by British historian Crawford smooth the way through much of what is otherwise a compilation of uneven value. inconse quential treatment. Illustrations.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0820332003
• ISBN 13: 9780820332000
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 304
• Editor: Crawford Martin