"In this collection of letters, Emma's writings reveal a woman of determination, faith, and integrity who embraced her own causes of women's rights and temperance while maintaining full support for her husband's controversial agenda. Covering her life in Buckfield, Maine, from her marriage to a captain in the Eighth Maine Infantry, to her move to Georgia as the wife of one of the prominent figures in Reconstruction politics, the letters open a window on what life was like for an intelligent, independent woman during three of America's most turbulent decades."--Jacket.