Diary of a Union lady, 1861-1865
by Maria Lydig Daly
"When Maria Lydig Daly began her diary, she was thirty-seven years old and the wife of Charles P. Daly, a justice of the Court of Common Pleas in New York City ... She wrote as avidly, and often as angrily, on the events of the war and on its generals; on the 'dilettante' civilian volunteers and the wartime frivolity of New York society; on the Abolitionists, whose sincerity she doubted; on the institution of the draft, which set off the July 1863 riots; on the election of 1864; and on many other aspects of the conflict as seen from New York ... Her purpose in beginning the diary was to record for her own future reference what it was like to live through, and participate in, a period when the fate of the Union hung on the day-by-day actions of men she admired or hated or simply distrusted. Her diary re-creates the feeling of 'what it was like'"--Jacket.
