A Very Violent Rebel: The Civil War Diary of Ellen Renshaw House

by Ellen Renshaw House

Ellen Renshaw House was only nineteen years old in 1863 when she began a detailed journal of her experiences in Knoxville, Tennessee, amid the turmoil of the Civil War. Her diary, now published for the first time, is a remarkable document of the divided loyalties that were so pronounced in that part of the state and of the daily effects the war had on civilians.

A member of a middle-class family that had moved to Knoxville in 1860 from Georgia,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0870499440
• ISBN13: 9780870499449
• Release Date: December 1996
• Publisher: Univ Tennessee Press
• Length: 331 Pages
• Weight: 1.56 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Pithy Comments on the Occupation of Knoxville

Two g-grand nieces of Ellen House discovered these diaries in her trunk upon the death of an aunt. What a find! Ellen House had strong opinions and voiced them. The Siege of Knoxville (November 1863) is covered and Sutherland's footnotes make for GOOD history. Don't think, you WWII GIs out there, that "scuttlebutt" started in "our" war. There was plenty during the Civil War, some preposterous. Sutherland provides good interpretive notes. Highly recommended! Four stars only because there are a few gaps in Ellen's coverage of the War in Knoxville, but who can blame her. Deprivation was the order of the day.