The War Outside My Window

[L Verge]

At a Surratt House program this weekend, mention was made of a book entitled The War Outside My Window, which has been derived from a journal kept by an invalid teenager in Macon, Georgia, named LeRoy Wiley Gresham. The young man apparently suffered numerous disabilities, including what appears to have been tuberculosis of the spine.

From his window, he observed Union forces under Sherman's command as they tore through Georgia; but he also wrote about other things surrounding the Civil War. And, he wrote more discussing his illnesses and the probability that he was dying. Google the book on Amazon and there is an extensive write-up on young Gresham and his observations. One sentence compares him to Anne Frank of the Civil War era.

His writings have been turned into two books by editor Janet Croon, with assistance on the second, I Am Perhaps Dying, from Dennis A. Rasbach, M.D..