Four Years in Rebel Capitals: An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death (Collector's Library of the Civil War)

DeLeon, an accomplished author, wrote this book almost immediately after the war, revising and condensing notes and recollections gathered during its most trying times. The book is unique in that DeLeon experienced many events that other writers of the times largely glossed over. As a civilian, he wrote of the politics of the Confederacy and described many of the tensions within the government. He omits the campaigns and battles which he did not see and which have been the subject of so many writings. Instead he had the object of trying to paint honestly the inner life of the South and what was going on in its cities and towns as the war waged on. Geographically, it covers the war throughout the South but with the largest emphasis on happenings in Alabama and Virginia.