Tried Men and True, or Union Life in Dixie highlights in emotional detail the local tensions between Unionists and Confederates in the Civil War South and offers a rare first-person account of the guerrilla war that devastated Western Tennessee.
Thomas Jefferson Cypert (1827-1918) was a staunch Union man of Wayne County, Tennessee. In 1863, he helped organize the Second Tennessee Mounted Infantry, a regiment of loyalist Southerners enlisted to combat Confederate cavalry in West Tennessee and Northern Alabama. Tried Men and True is Cypert's memoir of his time as Captain of...