Two Years Before the Paddlewheel: Charles F. Gunther, Mississippi River Confederate, Bruce S. Allardice, Wayne L. Wolf

Charles F. Gunther is a Yankee ice peddlar who is trapped in the South at the outbreak of the war. Presented here are two years of diaries of Gunthers experiences working on the steamboat Rose Douglas, ferrying Confederate troops and supplies.

After the war, Gunther makes a fortune in the candy business across the street from Marshal Fields in Chicago, becomes a premier collector and preserver of Civil War artifacts and Lincoln memorabilia, endows the Chicago history Museum with its Civil War collection, and goes on to hold political office as an alderman and City Treasurer of Chicago.

In Two Years Before the Paddlewheel, readers can follow the day-by-day survival of an ordinary ice merchant turned Confederate steamboat purser during the Civil War. Gunthers day-by-day account as a civilian in military service illuminates the economic, military, social, and personal side of Americas Civil War.