Contemners and Serpents: The James Wilson Family Civil War Correspondence

Contemners and Serpents presents letters from the family of Presbyterian missionaries James and Eliza Wilson during the Civil War era. Spanning the period from 1859 to 1877, during which family members lived in Tennessee, Georgia, and South Carolina, included are letters written by James Wilson, his wife Eliza Griffing Edwards Wilson, their four sons, and their only daughter. The book offers a range of individual voices and relates to the battlefield, the home front, and the eastern and western theaters of the war. The Wilsons are an interesting case because the parents were Pennsylvania natives, the children were born and reared in India, and the family spent most of the years between 1834 and 1852 outside the United States. Neither slaveholders nor landowners, the Wilsons had varied approaches to the war, ranging from neutral or pro-Union sentiment to extreme support for the Confederacy. Although not wealthy, the Wilsons were well-educated and articulate. Their lives, experiences, and points of view offer a distinctive insight into the Civil War era.