The subtitle says: an Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death. The author, T. C. DeLeon, points out beginning the book: Written almost immediately after the war, from notes and recollections gathered during its most trying scenes, these papers are now revised, condensed and formulated for the first time. In years past, some of their crude predecessors have appeared—as random articles—in the columns of the Mobile Sunday Times, Appleton's Journal, the Louisville Courier-Journal, the Philadelphia Times and other publications. Even in their present condensation and revision, they claim only to be simple memoranda of the result of great events; and of their reaction upon the mental and moral tone of the southern people, rather than a record of those events themselves.