In the Beauty of the Lilies

He was an ordinary citizen, perhaps a schoolteacher, but nonetheless an enigma, who followed his country's armies into that holocaust called The War Between The States. Compelled by a sense of obligation, the author chronicled neither great battles nor the deeds of generals but instead focused on the experiences of those who bore the war's greatest costs-the soldiers who fought it and the common people who endured it. For too long, owing to the many misleading myths propagated in the North about the Southern "Cause" and afterwards promoted by the general culture (via entertainment and formal education), he's been made the war's villain. "Johnny Reb" was as genuinely American as any soldier in blue. He fought doggedly and ultimately against overwhelming odds for the Southern states in what he perceived and believed was the defense of the Constitution as he and learned men then interpreted it. The war never truly resolved the Constitutional issue of states' rights versus federal authority, having merely stifled the debate via force of arms. No one knows his ultimate fate, but those he wrote about no longer remain anonymous In the Beauty of the Lilies.