Spencer, Mrs. Bella Z. Tried and True, or Love and Loyalty: A Story of the Great Rebellion. Springfield, Mass.: W. J. Holland, 1873. [9518]
Maroon cloth decorated in black & gilt, spine faded, 8 1/4 x 6 inches, light wear to the ends & corners, 394 clean pp., tight. Several full-page wood engravings. Copyright is 1866. Good. Hardcover.
"Frequent visits to the Army of the South-west during the war, together with unusual advantages for becoming familiar with the singular events which marked the progress of our national strife, have placed me in possession of a the plot, and nearly all of the details, of this story. I spent several weeks at Paducah in 1862, leaving it after the battle of Shiloh; and it was while traveling thither, I first came to know the heroine of my story." - Preface.
Begins with the Author's Residence at the South before the Great Rebellion; Treatment of the Slaves; Conduct of Ex-Rebels Since the Declaration of Peace. The novel includes Destruction of the Steamer; Life and Death in a Military Hospital ; Hospital Life at Paducah; Fighting at Pittsburgh Landing; Incidents and Horrors on a Battle-Field; Prison Pens and Refugees; Escaping from Prison; Pleading for the Life of a Rebel Prisoner; Some of the Workings of the "Peculiar Institution"; Sharp Practice and Brutal Doings; Blood-Hounds and Hell-Hounds; The Battle of Corinth, and Some of its Horrors; The Capture of Fort Fisher; The Last Act in the Tragedy, with Brighter Closing Scenes.
"Astrea Harmon's complicated love affairs with an Alabama slave-holder and a northern army officer whom she meets while nursing in Paducah." - Thompson, Lawrence S. The War between the States in the Kentucky Novel: The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Vol. 50, No. 170 (January, 1952).
Bella Zilfa Spencer (1840-1867), b. London, England; d. Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Born to an English father and an Italian mother, her parents settled in (now) West Virginia when she was a child. She married at age 15, but five years later her husband and two children were dead. She published short stories in Godey's Ladies Book and Harper's Magazine, and wrote three novels published 1864, 1866, and 1867. She married Union Army general George E. Spencer in 1862, going with him to Alabama where after the war he became a lawyer and politician. Bella Zilfa Spencer died of typhoid fever in 1867.
