This little volume is a collection of letters of the dashing Confederate General George E. Pickett to his third wife, La Salle "Sallie" Corbell, whom he married in 1863. In the introduction, Sallie recounts favorite personal memories of her husband, including their first meeting and subsequent courtship. She then gives an overview of his military experiences, beginning with his participation in the suppression of the San Juan Islands rebellions and ending with his career in the Confederate army. Pickett's letters focus on his Confederate career, include candid descriptions of camp life, his analysis of several major battles, and his private thoughts and feelings as the war progressed. Pickett is herein portrayed as a devoted general who reveled in battle, yet suffered tremendously over the deaths of his soldiers. His letters also reveal his distress at fighting old friends from his West Point years, and his sorrow over the country's violent division.
About the Author: LaSalle Corbell Pickett was the third wife of George E. Pickett, the Confederate general best known for leading the doomed frontal assault known as Pickett's Charge during the Battle of Gettysburg in July of 1863. She was born Sallie Ann Corbell on May 16, 1843, in Nansemond County, Virginia, the eldest of nine children. Her parents, David John Corbell and Elizabeth Phillips Corbell, were slaveholders and owned a plantation near Suffolk. Sallie attended the Female Seminary in Lynchburg and met Pickett while still a young girl. Once the Civil War began, a passionate romance blossomed and the two were married on September 15, 1863 at Saint Paul's Episcopal Church in Petersburg, not long after the disastrous Confederate defeat at Gettysburg. Sallie often joined her husband near the front lines while he served with the Army of Northern Virginia, and their son George, Jr. was born in 1864. After the war, the Picketts fled to Montreal for a few months, where Sallie taught Latin and sold her jewelry, before returning to Virginia. Their youngest son, Corbell, died in 1874, at the age of eight. The former general, long plagued by ill health, died the following year, at the age of fifty. Sallie lived for fifty-six more years, raising their surviving son, finding much-needed work in the U.S. Pensions office in Washington, D.C., and in the 1880s becoming a prolific author and public speaker. She died on March 22, 1931 and was buried in Abbey Mausoleumin, Arlington County, Virginia. Her remains were relocated in front of her husband's grave in Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond in 1998 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy.