At the outset of the Civil War, Josie Underwood was the educated, outspoken daughter of a politically prominent family in Bowling Green, Kentucky. She left behind a unique, intimate account of the early years of the war, one of the few from a Kentucky woman sympathetic to the Union. "The Philistines are upon us," twenty-year-old Josie writes in her diary, leaving no question about the alarm she feels when Confederate soldiers occupy her once-peaceful town.

Available for the first time in print, Josie Underwood's Civil War Diary offers a vivid, firsthand account of a family that owned slaves and opposed Lincoln, yet remained unshakably loyal to the Union. Josie's father, Warner, played an important role in keeping Kentucky from seceding. Among the many highlights of the diary is Josie's record of meeting the president in wartime Washington, which served to soften her opinion of him.

Josie describes her fear of secession and war, and the anguish of having relatives and friends fighting on opposite sides, noting in the spring of 1861 that many friendships and families were breaking up "faster than the Union." The diary also brings to life the fears, frustrations, and deprivations of living under occupation in strategically important Bowling Green, known as the "Gibraltar of the Confederacy" during the war. Despite the wartime upheaval, Josie's life is also refreshingly normal at times and she recounts travel, parties, local gossip, and the search for her "true Prince."

Nancy Disher Baird is the author of Healing Kentucky: Medicine in the Bluegrass State and coauthor of Western Kentucky University: The First 100 Years. Since 1975 she has served as professor and special collections librarian at Western Kentucky University.

Reviews:

"A little gem of Civil War literature.... It gives a uniquely clear and penetrating analysis of the home front in the 'brothers' war,' with a vivid picture of a family who owned slaves, believed in slavery, hated abolitionism, opposed Lincoln and held him in utter contempt, yet was unshakably loyal to the Union."-Charles P. Roland, Alumni Professor of History Emeritus, University of Kentucky

"...The journal, as edited by Baird, stands as an interesting and important contribution to the literature on Civil War era Kentucky."-Ohio Valley History