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Corydon Fuller's journals document the travels of a young bookseller (from the Northern Midwest) in Arkansas, bordering areas in Louisiana, and in Mississippi in the years preceding the Civil War.

Corydon Fuller's intriguing journals (marked "Vol. 6th" and "Vol. 7") follow the path of the young itinerant bookseller in a fascinating series of situations and places. A college graduate, Fuller wrote both well and copiously, recording the events and his impressions with impressive clarity and depth.

As a man prone to some reflection on the political and social issues of his day, Fuller's journals are a valuable resource for study of the hardening sectional lines in the Trans-Mississippi South. By 1857, Fuller believed that an impasse had been reached, reflected both in his reporting of adamant Southern views on slavery and states' rights, and in his own hot-tempered opinions on moral right versus wrong.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Susan Bricelin Fletcher Lewis was a young wife with a three year old son, and lived in a slave-holding family in Saline County, Ark. Written when in her seventies, almost fifty years after the events, her memoirs of her life during the Civil War consist of a series of semi-connected anecdotes of a Confederate woman's experiences in Arkansas.

Written when in her seventies, almost fifty years after the events, Susan Bricelin Fletcher Lewis' memoirs of her life during the Civil War consist of a series of semi-connected anecdotes of a Confederate woman's experiences in Arkansas. The memoir is brief, sketchy, and focused on the outrages committed against lone women in the war zone (mostly theft and extortion) and the ingenuity women used to survive. Lewis' experience as a refugee in Benton, and the bitterness she felt so long after the events are particularly interesting.