Janet Elizabeth Croon at battlefield

In partnership with the National Park Service, Eastern National would like to invite you to meet Janet Elizabeth Croon, editor of “The War Outside My Window: The Civil War Diary of LeRoy Wiley Gresham, 1860 – 1865”. Croon will be available Saturday, June 16, from 1– 5 p.m. inside the Chickamauga Battlefield Visitor Center to meet with you and sign your copy of this highly anticipated release.

“The War Outside My Window”: LeRoy Wiley Gresham was born in 1847 to a prominent slave-holding family in Macon, Georgia. At the age of eight, LeRoy severely injured his leg, which left him crippled. LeRoy’s mother gifted him with a blank journal so that he could record his upcoming journey to see a medical specialist in Philadelphia. LeRoy, then twelve years old, began journaling almost every day. His writings would become a primary source outlining events during the Civil War in addition to detailing personal hardships with declining health during his teen years.

“The War Outside My Window” is really a window looking into the thoughts and perceptions of a doomed teenager who watched the Confederacy die even as he was dying himself. Intimate, observant, thoughtful, often amusing, his diary offers a heartrending portrait of courage and resilience by a young man robbed of his youth, one personal tragedy amid the decline and collapse of the South. Pitiably few records survived to give us an understanding of the inner world of the young in the Civil War era. LeRoy Gresham’s “Window” lets in more light on the subject than any other source we have.—William C. Davis, author of “Inventing Loreta Velasquez.”