The Fire of Liberty in Their Hearts

The Fire of Liberty in Their Hearts: The Diary of Jacob E. Yoder of the Freedmen's Bureau School, Lynchburg, Virginia, 1866—1870

Ed. Samuel L. Horst. 1996. 240 pages, 20 black-and-white illustrations
ISBN 0-88490-181-5 (cloth) $24.95

In the tumultuous days after the close of the Civil War, a young teacher of Pennsylvania Mennonite background made his way to the city of Lynchburg to become an instructor in the Freedmen's Bureau schools. Jacob Eschbach Yoder taught students with a deep thirst for knowledge and the "fire of liberty in their hearts." At the close of his long day's teaching, Yoder often stole a few minutes to record his experiences in a journal. The diaries, published here for the first time, provide a remarkable glimpse of daily life in the postwar South and the personal musings of a young man coming of age in a time of great social change. His eyewitness account of the struggle for freedom shows a man wrestling with his own preconceptions and radical politics.

"Horst...places Yoder in the Virginia context and also within the less familiar world (for southern historians) of the Mennonites of Pennsylvania. The result is an attractive, beautifully printed, accessible book."—Journal of Southern History