Three Months in the Southern States

During the Civil War’s pivotal summer of 1863 British Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Fremantle visited the Confederacy. He entered Texas from Mexico on April 7, 1863. Fourteen weeks later he left New York to return to Britain. During the interval he visited every Confederate state except Florida and Arkansas. Along the way he called on more than a dozen Confederate leaders including Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. He was an observer at the battle of Gettysburg. During the final two days of his journey in New York he witnessed the draft riots. Throughout his 2,500-mile trip he maintained a diary, averaging 750 words daily. Owing to his neutrality, top-level access, and extensive travel, Fremantle’s observations are priceless.

His first hand account of the War’s impact on Southern civilians is considerably different than many present day historians describe. For example, Fremantle was appalled at the destruction of Jackson, Mississippi by Ulysses Grant’s army because a great many civilian structures were razed that could have no military purpose. Similarly, he was appalled at the condition of women and children in the wake of Union armies, but was convinced the women were even more determined than Southern males to continue the war.

While he met an impressive number of leaders, many are only dimly remembered today. Additionally he met some of the prominent ones when they focused on obscure matters. While Freemantle began his diary mildly predisposed toward the Union side because of his dislike of slavery, he was soon awakened to the gallantry of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and his generals, ordinary soldiers, and the women left at home. From April to early July 1863 -- the critical period of campaigns at Vicksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg -- Fremantle traveled from the Texas frontier with the Texas 2nd Cavalry Regiment to northern Virginia, recording in a diary his experience of the war.

Overall his stories of individual behavior are more than credible and drive home the point that this war was affecting the lives of real people, not historical figures. The stories of hotel keepers in northern territory that were hesitant to let him have a room until he produced gold coin for payment, the slave of a Confederate officer leading a Yankee prisoner by a rope tied around the poor prisoner's neck, and the several stories of southern women being far more antagonistic toward the north than were the men, all help bring the human side of the civil war to life.

"Three Months in the Southern States", published upon his return to England later in the year, became a best seller in both Britain and America, both North and South, but was then forgotten until its reissue on the eve of the centenary of the American Civil War. While his anecdotes and his take on the various Confederate generals he meets are terrific, this work truly shines in the outsiders perspective he brings to the conflict. He closes the book with this paragraph:

But the mass of respectable Northerners, though they may be willing to pay, do not very naturally feel themselves called upon to give their blood in a war of aggression, ambition, and conquest.-- For this war is essentially a war of conquest. If ever a nation did wage such a war, the North is now engaged, with a determination worthy of a more hopeful cause, in endeavoring to conquer the South; but the more I think of all that I have seen in the Confederate States of the devotion of the whole population, the more I feel inclined to say with General Polk--"How can you subjugate such a people as this?" and even supposing that their extermination were a feasible plan, as some Northerners have suggested, I never can believe that in the nineteenth century the civilized world will be condemned to witness the destruction of such a gallant race.

-- "One of the most delightful accounts written about the Confederacy by a foreigner." -- Journal of SW Georgia History.

-- "I give this 5 stars not because I liked what he said but that I appreciate hearing a different viewpoint of the Civil War."

-- "This is original source eyewitness American History. It is politically incorrect. This account by a noncombatant English observer contradicts the historical revisionist.

-- "Great book not politically correct just correct. Everyone ought to read this book to learn the truth......."

-- "You aren't going to read this in any government school. Get it and educate yourself. You will be glad you did."

-- "Anyone interested in the war should read this book. It gives the best "close up" view of the war by a man that by sheer luck was in the right place at the right time. A great majority of books about the war are written by Yankees and have a very decided slant; the great "moral" war to free the black man. Anyone who has studied the war with open eyes knows what baloney that is. This book shows the Southern view of the war at the time of the war and of course it is much different from a Yankee history book."

-- "Most interesting that there was such support for the military in the South. Obviously the British were more inline with the Southern aristocracy than their Union counterparts. Now I understand why the Southerners were so taunted by their defeat and why it took so long for them to get over it. I do believe their was a different honor system between the North and South as Col Fremantle points out. The woman who had suffered the loss of three boys, and was eager to send the fourth to avenge their death ("you shall have Harry too!") was what solidified that thought for me. I think things would have been fine if the North had left the South alone. The Civil War should never have been fought."

The editors at Time-Life chose this book as one of the volumes of the Collector's Library of the Civil War. It is available in a leather-bound edition with gilded gold edges and also in paperback and digital formats. It is included as one of the volumes on the DVD of our Collector's Library set.