Three Months in the Southern States: April-June 1863 [Paperback]

Arthur J. F. Fremantle Lt. Col. (Author), Gary W. Gallagher (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1991

The American Civil War was at a turning point in 1863 when Lt. Col. Arthur J. L. Fremantle of the British Coldstream Guards toured the Confederacy. 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 Johnny Rebs, 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 to northern Virginia, recording in a diary his experience of the war. Three Months in the Southern States, published upon his return to England later in the year, has long been considered a classic of wartime writing, especially in its description of the Battle of Gettysburg. Filled with biographical vignettes of Lee, Davis, Stonewall Jackson, Sam Houston, and others, this book offers a kaleidoscopic view of the Confederacy at floodtide.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Since 1863 Three Months in the Southern States has enjoyed a reputation as one of the finest of Civil War books."—Richard Harwell, in his introduction to Two Views of Gettysburg

(Richard Harwell )

About the Author

Gary W. Gallagher is a professor of history at Pennsylvania State University and the author of Fighting for the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander (1989) and other books.

Product Details

• Paperback: 330 pages
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press (February 1, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803268750
• ISBN-13: 978-0803268753
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,244,909 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars If he'd had "visited" the North first...?, December 2, 2002

By 

Charles C. DiVincenti Jr. "Carlo" (Louisiana) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Three Months in the Southern States: April-June 1863 (Paperback)

Fremantle's diary offers an interesting and indeed first -hand view of the Confederacy during his brief tenure in the Southern states. The reader quickly realizes that Fremantle has become quite enamoured with the Southern spirit and elan. Once I finished this marvelous account, I did, though, wonder what his diary would have been like if he'd begun his journey in more Northern climes. It is most interesting to see his natural European bias show at times - his usual disdain for the Dutch and Germans of Pennsylvania, and of course, his affinity for the Southern aristocracy of which as a Brit he is well versed.Also of note is the fact that this account was published shortly after his travels - hence, we see no post-war agenda being served like many other after-the-fact memoirs and such. All said, a wonderful look at the times with a true "you are there" approach (don't miss his climbing in the trees to get a good glimpse of the battlefield at Gettysburg!)

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Journey Through the Civil War South, March 27, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Three Months in the Southern States: April-June 1863 (Paperback)

Arthur Fremantle was a British Army officer who (for "a vacation") went traveling through the Confederacy. On his journey, he met many top generals and was at Gettysburg during the vicious battle. One can get a unique perspective on how it was to live and travel in the South during the Civil War. Many interesting bits of information will greet the reader, among them a slave voluntarily leading Union prisoners through a Northern village. This is a must for all Civil War buffs.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Vivid picture of the embattled Confederacy, November 25, 2000

By 

Lance Wilcox (Lombard, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Three Months in the Southern States: April-June 1863 (Paperback)

Anyone who either read "The Killer Angels" or saw the movie "Gettysburg" will remember Colonel Fremantle as the pleasant, urbane, mildly dweeby British officer hanging about the camp of General Longstreet. This is the diary kept by that British officer during the spring and summer of 1863. It was a popular success upon its publication, while the war was still going on, and has remained one of the most vivid, engaging portraits of the Confederacy as it struggled for its existence during the summer that all but doomed it.

Fremantle entered the Confederacy through Mexico. The opening third of his diary recounts his travels from Brownsville to San Antonio, back east to Houston, and then north and east into Louisiana. Fremantle's portrait of raw, brash, violent Texas would be worth reading on its own, even if it weren't followed up by the account of his travels from there to Virginia. To reach the Army of Northern Virginia, Fremantle traveled the entire length of the Confederacy, noting its struggles, its privations, and its intense will to survive. He arrived in Virginia just in time to follow Lee's army into Pennsylvania and watch the battle of Gettysburg from tree top, camp fire, and horseback.

Fremantle is a brisk, vivid, observant writer. He writes a lean, sharp prose, has a good eye for detail, and clips through his account at high speed. As a result, his diary is compulsively readable from end to end, as well as being frequently quite funny. Americans seen through aristocratic British eyes look often like Twain's wilder characters. His book also, however, serves to correct and refine commonly held perceptions of the South. He notes, for example, how furiously the Southern women wished the defeat of the Yankees; the women come across as more violent and implacable than the men in the field. He also corrects the tendency to see the Army of Northern Virginia as finished or desponding after their defeat at Gettysburg. In July 1863 the loss seems to have appeared to Lee's men as a temporary set-back, not at all the beginning of the end. "Lee's Miserables" entirely expected to come back later and return to their old habit of thrashing the Army of the Potomac whenever they met it.

The Southerners appear in the diary, in fact, more worried about Vicksburg than about Gettysburg, and were forced to credit U. S. Grant with being a scrappy fighter, if no great tactician. They could not begin to see or imagine his decisive role in their future. The diary ends with the election of 1864 still in the future and Fremantle convinced that the South will live to win its freedom.

Given how much Colonel Fremantle was able to observe and report in the few months he was on American soil, one can only wish, after reading his book, that he had arrived in spring 1861 and been able to hang around the entire four years. It is certainly one of the liveliest accounts of the Confederacy at war this side of Sam Watkins' unrivaled "Co. Aytch."