William Henry Hurlbert and the ‘Diary of a Public Man’

(NYTimes) ... Hurlbert’s “diary” has had a rollercoaster history. It attracted many readers when first published, but it swam against the dominant tide of postwar public opinion: people both North and South needed to believe that they had sacrificed for a worthy cause, and they were not likely to accept that the crisis somehow could have been settled without war. Historians found it valuable, especially those after World War I who were as skeptical about the war fought in their lifetimes as Hurlbert was about the one fought in his. Today, however, the diary is once again in the shadows because we have come to view the Civil War as an essential purifier — the only way to excise the cancer of slavery. Continued