First published in 1873, Bill Arp's Peace Papers, by Charles Henry Smith (1826-1903), is a collection of writings from the Civil War and Reconstruction by the Confederacy's most famous humorist. Smith, a lawyer in Rome, Georgia, took the penname "Bill Arp" in April 1861, following the firing on Fort Sumter, when he wrote a satiric response to Abraham Lincoln's proclamation ordering the Southern rebels to disperse within twenty days. In his letter addressed to "Mister Linkhorn" and written in the semiliterate backwoods dialect adopted by numerous mid-nineteenth-century humorists, Smith advised...

The events of my father's life may be chronicled in a few lines, but it would take many pages to tell of the mental and spiritual gifts that made that life notable, and of its influence over a wide circle of known and unknown friends. Still more potent was the impress of his character upon those nearest to him, whose privilege it was to see him day by day and partake of the wit, wisdom, kindliness and humor that made him the most fascinating of companions to his children. He has himself told in this book the main incidents of his career; how his father, Asahel Reid Smith, a sturdy young son...

Bill Arp's Photographs From The American Civil War From the Uncivil War to Date, 1861-1903: With An Original Compilation of Photographs from the American Civil War