Voices from Cemetery Hill: The Civil War Diary, Reports, and Letters of Colonel William Henry Asbury Speer (1861-1864)

Professor Allen Speer has kindly shared with us the innermost thoughts of his Confederate ancestor, Colonel William Henry Asbury Speer through a diary and a number of letters to his folks back home. While the diary does show the horrors of the war and the problems of being captured, the focus of the work is to show the inner conflicts suffered by those who answered the call to duty to fight for their nation (whether it was the Confederate States of America or the United States) and the pain those men felt because they were fighting against friends and family. The bitterness of family members over the war and the death of loved ones is made painfully clear by a letter written by Col. Speer's mother several years after he was killed fighting in the 28th North Carolina at Reams Station in August of 1864. This book brings us closer to understanding the complexities of the Civil War, a war that was not only fought between nations, but between friends and families.