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5.0 out of 5 stars
Hey, Ken Burns, You Missed One!,
By Notnadia (Currently upstairs.) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Queen City Lady : The 1861 Journal of Amanda Wilson (Paperback)
Amanda Wilson lived in Cincinnati, Ohio (then the nation's sixth-largest city and second-busiest inland port) during the time of the American Civil War, and her meticulously-kept diary records her life during this frightening period. Wilson, an upper-middle class woman of early middle age, worked from her home on behalf of the American war effort, sewing, attending charitable functions, and worrying over the safety and health of her brother, who enlisted as an officer in an Ohio infantry regiment that frequently saw combat in the eastern theater of operations. Wilson writes of the rising cost of basic necessities during the war years, tells tidbits of gossip and news as they filter in from the front lines, and in relating the stuff of her daily life, she provides a fine, well-rounded impression of what a woman's life on the homefront in a border city was like. Later in the diary, Mrs. Wilson tells the news of her brother's death in the center of the Union lines at Chancellorsville, and the pain of her grief radiates from the pages with so much honest sorrow that this loss in a war long part of history is almost as touching as the news of a modern-day passing.
Exactly why this diary is not more well-known puzzles me, because in its excellently-written detail it more than holds its own against such Civil War diaries as that of Mary Chesnut, a southern counterpart of Mrs. Wilson. The edition I read was a reference copy held in non-circulating ownership by the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. I think what this fine work needs to boost its popularity (and make the reading public more aware of its very existence) is a new, annotated version to be mass produced in the near future. Amanda Wilson was too extraordinary a person for her legacy to be stifled by her relative state of unknown: particularly here in her hometown.
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