Her War

Interpreting Women's Lives during the American Civil War

Diaries, Letters, and Memoirs

Adams, Lois Bryan. Letter from Washington, 1863-1865. 1999

Alleman, Tillie Pierce. At Gettysburg, Or What a Girl Saw and Heard of the Battle. 1888. Reprint Butternut and Blue, 1987.

Baker, Cheryl Jackson. Affectionately Your’s: The Civil War Letters of William R. Jackson and His Wife Julia. 2014. Badgley Publishing Company.

Bond, Priscilla. Kimberly Harrison, ed. A Maryland Bride in the Deep South: The Civil War Diary of Priscilla Bond. 2006.

Browder, George Richard, Richard L. Troutman, ed. The Heavens are Weeping – The Diaries of George Richard Browder 1851-1886. 2013.

Buck, Lucy Rebecca. Shadows on My Heart: The Civil War Diary of Lucy Rebecca Buck of Virginia. 1997.

Bucklin, Sophronia E. In Hospital and Camp: A Woman’s Record of Thrilling Incidents Among the Wounded in the Civil War. Originally published 1869. Current edition Big Byte Books, 2014.

Bunkers, Suzane L. ed. The Diary of Caroline Seabury 1854-1863. 1991

Byers, Mary Adelia. Torn by War: The Civil War Journal of Mary Adelia Byers. 2013

Cashin, Joan E, ed.: Our Common Affairs: Texts From Women in the Old South. 1996.

Chase, Julia and Laura Lee. Winchester Divided: The Civil War Diaries of Julia Chase and Laura Lee. 2002.

Cotton, Gordon A. ed. From the Pen of a She-Rebel: The Civil War Dairy of Emilie Riley McKinley. 2001

Croon, Janet. ed. The War Outside My Window: The Civil War Diary of LeRoy Wiley Gresham, 1860-1865. 2018

Daly, Maria Lydig. Diary of a Union Lady, 1861-1865. 2000

Dawson, Sarah Morgan and Charles East, ed. Sarah Morgan: The Civil War Diary of a Southern Woman. 1992

Dimond, E. Grey and Harman Hattaway, ed. Letters from Forest Place: A Plantation Family’s Correspondence, 1846-1881. 1993

Donohue, Patricia A. The Printer’s Kiss: The Life and Letters of a Civil War Newspaperman and His Family. 2014

Dougherty, Gerald. Ann’s Letters: A Newly Released Collection of Letters from the American Civil War. 2014

Dowlin, Mary Jane. The Diaries of Mary Jane Dowlin 1864-1865. Transcribed by Maisie Hodes-Wood. 2000

Dublin, Thomas. Farm to Factory: Women’s Letters 1830-1860. 1982

Erwin, Margaret Johnson and John Seymour Erwin. Like Some Green Laurel: Letters of Margaret Johnson Erwin, 1821-1863

Fletcher, Louisa Warren. Henry Higgins and Connie Cox with Jean Cole Anderson, ed. Journal of a Landlady: A Personal Account of Life in the Deep South During the Civil War Era by a Loyal Union Family. 1995.

Fox, Tryphena Blanche Holder. Northern Woman in the Plantation South: Letters of Tryphena Blanche Holder Fox, 1856-1876. 1997

Formby, Colleen. 19th Century Diaries and Letters. Scroll to the bottom of the page for the download link.

Gaillard, Frye. Journey to the Wilderness: War, Memory, and a Southern Family’s Civil War Letters. 2015

Gott, John K. My Heart Is So Rebellious: The Caldwell Letters 1861-1865. 1991

Haas, Shirley A. A Refugee at Hanover Tavern: The Civil War Diary of Margaret Wight. 2013

Hague, Parthenia. A Blockaded Family: Life in Southern Alabama During the Civil War.2005

Hanson, Kathleen S. Turn Backward, O Time: The Civil War Diary of Amanda Shelton. 2006

Heidelbaugh, Lynn, ed. Between Home and Front: Civil War Letters of the Walters Family. 2022

Hill, Sarah Jane Full. Mrs. Hill’s Journal. 1980

Holmes, Emma. Diary of Miss Emma Holmes 1861-1866. 1994

Holmes, Kenneth L., ed. Covered Wagon Women: Diaries & Letters from the Western Trails, 1854-1860. 1987

Jones, Katharine. The Diary of a Southern Lady. 2013

Laas, Virginia Jeans. Wartime Washington: The Civil War Letters of Elizabeth Blair Lee. 1991

Le Grand, Julia. The Journal of Julia Le Grand New Orleans 1862-1863. 2009

Lensink, Judy Nolte. A Secret to Be Burried: The Diary and Life of Emily Hawley Gillespie, 1858-1888. 1989

Livermore, Mary A. My Story of the War. 1896

Lomax, Elizabeth Lindsay. Leaves from an Old Washington Diary 1854-1863. 1943

Lunt, Dolly Sumner. The Diary of Dolly Lunt Burge, 1848-1879. 1997

Mackenzie, Muriel D. ed. “Maggie!” Maggie Lindsley’s Journal: Nashville, Tennessee, 1864, Washington, D.C. 1865. 1977

Macsherry, Helen Drury. Pastime: Life and Love on the Homefront During the Civil War, 1861-1865. 2013

Malbuff, David. Miss Priscilla Larkin, Larkinville, Ala: The Civil War Diary of a Southern Bell. Kindle edition, 2021

Marston, Anna Lee, Records of a California Family: Journals and Letters of Lewis C. Gunn and Elizabeth Le Breton Gunn. 1928

Meriwether, Elizabeth Avery. Recollection of 92 years, 1824-1916. 1994

McGuire, Judith W. Diary of a Southern Refugee during the War, by a Lady of Virginia. 1995

Mohr, James C., ed. The Cormany Diaries: A Northern Family in the Civil War. 1982

Moskow, Shirley Blotnick. Emma’s World: An Intimate Look at Lives Touched by the Civil War Era. 1990

Otis, Eliza A.W. and Harrison Gray Otis. Architects of Our Fortunes: The Journal of Eliza A. W. Otis 1860-1863.  2000.

Pember, Phoebe Yates. A Southern Woman’s Story. 2011

Ramey, Emily G. and John K Gott, ed. The Years of Anguish: Fauquier County, virginia, 1861-1865. 1965, reprinted 2008.

Rhodes, Nancy L. Wanted – Correspondence: Women’s Letters to a Union Soldier. 2009

Richards, Caroline Cowles. Village Life in American 1852 to 1872 Including the Period of the American Civil War as Told in the Diary of a School Girl. 2010

Richards, Samuel Pearce, ed and Wendy Hamand Venet, ed. Sam Richards’s Civil War Diary: A Chronicle of the Atlanta Home Front. 2009.

Roberts, Timothy Mason ed. “This Infernal War”: The Civil War Letters of William and Jane Standard. 2018.

Roper, Lucy Booker ed. Our Women in the War: The Lives They Lived, the Deaths They Died, Annotated. Kindle edition, 2012.

Rosengarten, Theodore. Tombee: Portrait of a Cotton Planter: With the Journal of Thomas B. Chaplin (1822-1890). 1992

Rozier, John, ed. The Granite Farm Letters: The Civil War Correspondence of Edgeworth & Sallie Bird. 2012

Russell, Richard. Fear in North Carolina: The Civil War Journals and Letters of the Henry Family. 2008

Russell, William Howard. My Diary, North and South. 2012

Schlissel, Lillian. Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey. 1987

Schultz, Jane E., ed. This Birth Place of Souls: The Civil War Nursing Diary of Harriet Eaton. 2011

Scythes, James M. ed. Letters to Lizzie: The Story of Sixteen Men in the Civil War and the One Woman Who Connected Them All. 2022

Smith, Jerry W. ed. L. Virginia French’s War Journal 1862-1865. 2007

Smith, David John, ed., Frances Dallam Peter, William Cooper Jr. ed. A Union Woman in Civil War Kentucky: The Diary of Frances Pete. 2021

Sutherland, Daniel E, ed. A Very Violent Rebel: Civil Diary of Ellen Renshaw House. 1996

Thomas, Sarah Sites. The Ties of the Past: The Gettysburg Diaries of Salome Myers Stewart 1854-1922. 1996

Toalson, Jeff, ed. I Got Nuthin Strange to Rite: A Selection of Forgotten Southern Letters 1861-1865. 2017

Venet, Wendy Hamand, ed. Sam Richards’s Civil War Diary: A Chronicle of the Atlanta Home Front. 2009

Whatley, John T. ed. An East Texas Family’s Civil War: The Letters of Nancy & William Whatley, May-December 1862. 2019

Wixson, Neal E., ed. From Civility to Survival: Richmond Ladies During the Civil War. 2012

Young, Carleton. Voices From the Attic: The Williamstown Boys in the Civil War. 2015