Charles F. Gunther is a Yankee ice peddlar who is trapped in the South at the outbreak of the war. Presented here are two years of diaries of Gunther's experiences working on the steamboat Rose Douglas, ferrying Confederate troops and supplies. After the war, Gunther makes a fortune in the candy business across the street from Marshal Field's in Chicago, becomes a premier collector and preserver of Civil War artifacts and Lincoln memorabilia, endows the Chicago history Museum with its Civil War collection, and goes on to hold political office as an alderman and City Treasurer of Chicago. In Two Years Before the Paddlewheel, readers can follow the day-by-day survival of an ordinary ice merchant turned Confederate steamboat purser during the Civil War. Gunther's day-by-day account as a civilian in military service illuminates the economic, military, social, and personal side of America's Civil War.

BRUCE S. ALLARDICE is Professor of History at South Suburban College in Illinois. He is a past president of the Civil War Round Table of Chicago. Allardice has authored or coauthored six books and numerous articles on the Civil War. His book More Generals in Gray was a selection of the History Book Club.

WAYNE L. WOLF is Professor of Social Sciences and Criminal Justice at South Suburban College in Illinois. He is past president of the Lincoln-Davis Civil War Roundtable and is the author of twenty-three books, including Heroes and Rogues of the Civil War, The Last Confederate Scout, and Soldiers, Sailors, and Scoundrels of the Civil War.