The War Outside My Window: The Civil War Diary of LeRoy Wiley Gresham, 1860-1865

LeRoy Wiley Gresham was born in 1847 to an affluent slave-holding family in Macon, Georgia. After a severe leg injury left him an invalid, he began keeping a diary in 1860 at age twelve, just as secession and the Civil War began. He continued writing daily for five years until his death in 1865, documenting the collapse of the Old South through the perspective of a young, educated, and perceptive observer. Gresham's diary entries cover politics, the secession movement, the Civil War, family life, hobbies, and daily existence in Macon, a prominent Confederate manufacturing center. He recorded his concerns about the family's plantations, interactions with servants, and reflections on slavery and his family's declining fortunes. His observations are practical, philosophical, and often humorous. Throughout the five-year diary, Gresham chronicles his own deteriorating health alongside the war's progression. He describes increasing pain, weakness, abscesses, coughs, and debilitating illness that morphine and other remedies could not relieve. His entries alternate between hope and despair, often expressing wishes to have his leg amputated. Edited and annotated by Janet Croon with footnotes and a family biographical chart, this diary captures a privileged white teenager witnessing both his world's demise and his own physical decline. The book won the 2018 Douglas Southall Freeman Award.