Sir Arthur James Lyon Fremantle

Born in 1835, he served in the British Army and built a long military career that eventually included senior posts in the Mediterranean. Today, though, he is most often remembered as the author of Three Months in the Southern States, a journal based on his 1863 journey through the Confederacy.

During that trip, he traveled widely across the American South and witnessed events surrounding the Gettysburg campaign, recording what he saw with the eye of an observant visitor rather than a participant. That combination of military interest, curiosity, and immediacy has made his memoir a lasting source for readers interested in the Civil War.

He died in 1901, but his travel diary continues to attract historians and general readers alike for its unusual perspective: a British officer moving through a nation at war and trying to make sense of the people, places, and politics around him.