Heroes in Gray, Annotated and Illustrated.

Samuel Wells Sherrill (1869-1940) was a Southern educator who went on to serve as the State Superintendent of Public Instruction in Nashville, Tennessee. This book is a collation by Mr. Sherrill of assorted reminiscences written mostly by various members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in the early twentieth century. Mr. Sherrill’s goal in this collection was to educate the children of the South in the righteousness of the Confederate Cause, and to prevent the prophecy from Gen. Patrick Cleburne from coming “Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late... It means the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern schoolteachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision... to establish sectional superiority and a more centralised form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties.”A retired history teacher has supplemented the book with fascinating annotations without taking anything from the original work. A generous amount of illustrations have also been added to make this book come alive.