Virginia Before and During the War

One of the rarest of the "Lost Cause" writings of the post-American Civil War period is Henry H. Farmer's Virginia Before and During the War. Published privately by him in 1892, it received a limited distribution and quickly fell into oblivion as longer, more well publicized works about the war overshadowed it. But Farmer's modest volume stubbornly refuses to take a back seat to its larger, more powerful cousins. Its depictions of Danville, Virginia, plantation life in the 1850s and how that life came crashing down during the dramatic years of 1861 to 1865 are some of the best that the literature of the period has to offer. Perhaps most interesting are the arguments of its protagonists for and against slavery, secession and war – arguments that Farmer, whose sentiments originally lay with the South (but not with secession), heard and knew first-hand. This Clarion Publishing edition contains a foreword to the new edition and a biography of H.H. Farmer.