Years after the Civil War’s end, Kate Conway Macon Paulson asked her mother, Emma Cassandra Riely Macon, to record her experiences during the Civil War so that they could “be handed down to… grandchildren and… great-grandchildren.” Macon completed the reminiscences in 1896, and they were privately printed by her daughter in 1911. While Emma Cassandra Riely Macon is not as well-known as Winchester’s Mary Greenhow Lee, Cornelia McDonald, or Kate Sperry, Emma’s postwar reminiscences provide a unique perspective of the Civil War in the Shenandoah Valley, as Emma was a child during the conflict. Emma was 13 years old when the war began.
Emma’s reminiscences offer valuable insight into the complexities of life for Confederate civilians in the lower Shenandoah Valley and perspectives on various generals, including Nathaniel P. Banks, Stonewall Jackson, and Robert H. Milroy. Additionally, the volume provides insight into the experiences of enslaved people in the northern Shenandoah. What makes Macon’s reminiscences particularly valuable is that she offers insight into a period that few of her contemporaries addressed — the war’s immediate aftermath and the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Macon not only captures the uncertainty that followed Lincoln’s death but theorizes, as some historians have done since 1865, that “the work of reconstruction would have been differently administered, had he lived.”
Appended to the end of this important volume is a brief reminiscence of Reuben Conway Macon, Emma’s husband. The two were married in November 1865. By war’s end, Reuben served as the adjutant of the 13th Virginia Infantry.
Although it is nearly impossible to locate a first edition of this rare volume, a digital version of this important book, essential for any student of the conflict in the Shenandoah Valley, exists on the Internet Archive. The digital version can be read at the Internet Archive.
