The author, drawing on his residence in the city and subsequent research, delivers an eyewitness account of city life immediately before and during the Civil War. He traces political divisions and popular feeling in a community split between loyalty and disloyalty, and documents military actions that directly affected urban life, episodes of riot and seizure, prison and refugee conditions, medical and relief efforts, debates in pulpit and press, and initiatives for educating formerly enslaved people. The narrative combines chronological episodes and topical chapters, illustrated with portraits and views, to show how border-city circumstances shaped wartime experience and postwar adjustment.