author
Edward M. Boykin
1820–1891
A South Carolina physician, soldier, and memoirist, he wrote from direct experience of the Civil War’s final days. His best-known work, The Falling Flag, gives readers a personal view of retreat, defeat, and surrender.
1 Audiobook
The Falling Flag: Evacuation of Richmond, Retreat and Surrender at Appomattox
by Edward M. Boykin
About the author
Born in Camden, South Carolina, in 1820, Edward M. Boykin was a physician who also became known as a writer of Civil War history and family history. Records available online identify him as Edward Mortimer Boykin and place his life from May 17, 1820, to November 10, 1891.
During the Civil War, he served in the 7th South Carolina Cavalry and was promoted through the ranks, later being associated with the title of major and, near the war’s end, lieutenant colonel in some historical references. That military experience shaped his writing, especially The Falling Flag (1874), a firsthand account of the evacuation of Richmond and the retreat to Appomattox. He is also linked to The Boys and Girls Stories of the War and History of the Boykin Family.
What makes his work memorable is its closeness to lived experience. Rather than writing as a distant historian, he wrote as someone who had seen the conflict from inside it, which gives his books an immediate, personal tone for readers interested in nineteenth-century American history.