Mrs. Irby Morgan was born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee and was General John Hunt Morgan's cousin. Her memoir, How It Was; Four Years Among the Rebels (1892), records her experiences in Tennessee during the Civil War. Her husband, Irby Morgan, actively supported the Confederacy by raising money and acquiring goods for the army. Mrs. Morgan documents early efforts to prepare for war and then describes the war itself. She worked as a nurse in her home in the early part of the war, but her family fled across the South, stopping in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Chattanooga, Tennessee, Marietta, Georgia, and finally Augusta, Georgia, where they lived until the war ended. The narrative closes with a series of letters written during the war and excerpts from The Vidette, a magazine published intermittently by General Morgan's troops.

Harris Henderson