The author records a traveling correspondent's eyewitness diary of the U.S. Civil War era, moving along the Mississippi and through Northern and Southern cities and camps. Entries describe riverine travel, hotel and public meetings, camp life and military exercises, impressions of battles and casualties, slave markets and the society that sustains them, debates over politics and civil liberties, newspaper commentary, and encounters with political and diplomatic figures. The narrative alternates reportage and reflection on military organization, medical care, morale, public opinion in Britain and America, and vivid vignettes of American towns, landscapes, and wartime hardship.