Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army

Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army: Being a Narrative of Personal Adventures in the Infantry, Ordnance, Cavalry, Courier, and Hospital Services; With an Exhibition of the Power, Purposes, Earnestness, Military Despotism, and Demoralization of the South was published in 1862. Stevenson spent 13 months within the ranks of the Confederate South. He was able to observe from within which makes this work all the more interesting. In 1861 Stevenson left New York to visit the South where he hoped to find a relative and a school. Since he was a northerner he was in great danger in Arkansas. He was awakened in the middle of the night and taken from his lodgings. "You are now going to be tried by the Phillips County Vigilance Committee on suspicion of being a Northern man and an abolitionist. When you reach the grocery where they are assembled, seat yourself on the counter in the back part of the room, where if you have to defend yourself they cannot get behind you. Make no studied defence, but calmly meet the charges at the fitting time and in brief words. Keep cool, and use no language which can be tortured into an offensive sense, and if possible I will save you. If the worst comes, draw your pistols and be ready, but don't shoot while ever there is hope, for you will of course be killed the instant you kill any one else."