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 Dyer draws on previously unpublished sources--including a long-lost diary and a work of purported fiction based closely on the experience of Cyrena Stone, a Vermont native- to recreate the drama,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.
Thomas G. Dyer is the University Professor of Higher Education and History at the University of Georgia. His books include Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race; "To Raise Myself a Little": The Diaries and Letters of Jennie, Georgia Teacher; and The University of Georgia: A Bicentennial History, 1785-1985.
