A Union Woman in Civil War Kentucky: The Diary of Frances Peter

A Union Woman in Civil War Kentucky: The Diary of Frances Peter by Peter, Frances Dallam. Hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780813121444.

Frances Dallam Peter was one of the eleven children of Union army surgeon Dr. Robert Peter. Her candid diary chronicles Kentuckys invasion by Confederates under General Braxton Bragg in 1862, Lexingtons monthlong occupation by General Edmund Kirby Smith, and changes in attitude among the enslaved population following the Emancipation Proclamation. As troops from both North and South took turns holding the city, she repeatedly emphasized the rightness of the Union cause and minced no words in expressing her disdain for "the secesh." Peter articulates many concerns common to Kentucky Unionists. Though she was an ardent supporter of the war against the Confederacy, Peter also worried that Lincolns use of authority exceeded his constitutional rights. Her own attitudes toward Black people were ambiguous, as was the case with many people in that time. Peters descriptions of daily events in an occupied city provide valuable insights and a unique feminine perspective on an underappreciated aspect of the war. Until her death in 1864, Peter conscientiously recorded the position and deportment of both Union and Confederate soldiers, incidents at the military hospitals, and stories from the countryside. Her account of a torn and divided region is a window to the war through the gaze of a young woman of intelligence and substance.