Bell Wiley, one of the most prolific scholars of his generation, pioneered the social history of American soldiers. More broadly, he addressed himself to the "plain people--men and women, white and black--caught up in the maelstrom of civil war."

Born in the west Tennesee town of Halls, Bell Irvin Wiley was the sixth child of Ewing Baxter and Anne Bass Wiley. The elder Wiley was a "minister-teacher-farmer"; his wife was also a teacher. During the summers the Wiley siblings stayed by turns with their maternal grandmother, Fredonia Abernathy Bass, widow of a Confederate veteran. In later years Wiley remembered her as a "splendid Christian woman" who "loved God and most of his children--yankees excepted." He remembered, too, her tales of an invaded South, the ebb and flow of battle across Tennessee, and the deprivations visited on civilians by Union and Confederate troops.

The family often invited George Washington...