From the Pen of a She-Rebel: The Civil War Diary of Emilie Riley McKinley

SHORTLY AFTER SHE BEGAN her diary, Emilie Riley McKinley penned an entry to record the day she believed to be the saddest of her life. The date was July 4, 1863, and Federal troops had captured the city of Vicksburg, Mississippi. A teacher on a plantation near the city under siege, McKinley shared with others in her rural community an unwavering allegiance to the Confederate cause. What she did not share with her. Southern neighbors was her background: Emilie McKinley was a Yankee. McKinley's account, revealed through evocative diary entries, tells of a Northern woman who embodied sympathy for the Confederates. During the months that Federal troops occupied her hometown and county, she vented her feelings and opinions on the pages of her journal and articulated her support of the Confederate cause. Through sharply drawn vignettes, McKinley - never one to temper her beliefs - candidly depicted her confrontations with the men in blue along with observations of explosive interactions between soldiers and civilians. Maintaining a tone of wit and gaiety even as she encountered human pathos, she commented on major military events and reported on daily plantation life. An eyewitness accou

GORDON A. COTTON, a former history teacher and newspaper reporter, is curator and director of the Old Court House Museum in Vicksburg, Mississippi. He lives in Yokena, Mississippi.