The Journals of Josiah Gorgas, 1857-1878 Edited by Sarah Woolfolk Wiggins With a Foreword by Frank E. Vandiver Josiah Gorgas was best known as the highly regarded Chief of Confederate Ordnance. Born in 1818, he attended West Point, served in the U.S. Army, and later, after marrying Amelia Gayle, daughter of a former Alabama governor, joined the Confederacy. After the Civil War he served as president of The University of Alabama until ill health forced him to resign. His journals, maintained between 1857 and 1878, reflect the family's economic successes and failures, detail the course of the South through the Civil War, and describe the ordeal of Reconstruction.
Few journals cover such a sweep of history.
Wiggins informs with the sort of editorial notes expected of a careful scholar, but she enlightens with wide knowledge of American and southern history. . . . A superior peice of work. The contents of these journals are very significant for telling us much about Victorian family life, as well as for depicting military events, and the political and economic conditions faced by many Southerners during this critical period in American history. This may well be the most engaging edited volume I have ever read. Rarely does one find in a diarist the articulateness, insight, and candor that Gorgas exhibits.