Bell I. Wiley: Typescript of Southern Negroes, 1861-1865

Bell Irvin Wiley was born on January 5, 1906 in Halls, Tennessee, the sixth child of Ewing Baxter Wiley and Ann Bass Wiley. Wiley attended Asbury College in Kentucky and graduated in 1928 with a B.A. in History. Following graduation, he worked part-time at Asbury College as a member of the debating department, before accepting a position as assistant history professor. While working at Asbury, he began graduate study at the University of Kentucky, receiving his masters degree in 1931. He then attended Yale University where he came under the guidance of Ulrich B. Phillips, noted historian of the Old South. In 1933 Wiley received his Ph.D, and five years later his dissertation was published under the title, Southern Negroes, 1861-1865.

In 1934, Wiley moved to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where he became a professor of history at State Teachers College, (now the University of Southern Mississippi). During the summer, he lectured at Peabody College, where in 1935, he met Mary Frances Harrison. In December 1937, the two were married and subsequently had two children, George Bell (b.November 1946) and John Frances (b.December 1954).

During his lifetime, Wiley held several academic and professional positions, including professorships at the University of Mississippi (1938-1943), Louisiana State University (1946-1959), and Emory University (1960-1974). He served as president of the Southern Historical Society in 1955, and Chairman of the National Civil War Centennial Commission in 1961. In addition, he served in the United States Army between 1943 and 1946, during which time he was Staff Historian. He left the army in August 1946, with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Throughout the 1960s, Wiley traveled extensively in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Unfortunately, he suffered from severe bouts of depression in the late 1960s, and eventually retired from Emory University in 1974.

Surrounded from an early age by stories of the Civil War (his grandmother was a Confederate widow), Wiley always expressed a deep interest in the history of the period. His first book, Southern Negroes, 1861-1865, reflects that interest, as do many of his other works, which include The Life of Johnny Reb, the Common Soldier of the Confederacy (1943); The Plain People of the Confederacy (1943); The Life of Billy Yank, the Common Soldier of the Union (1952); Lincoln and Lee (1966); and Confederate Women (1975).

Wiley also edited fifteen other works including W.W. Heartsill's Fourteen Hundred and Ninety-One Days in the Confederate Army and Gilbert Moxley Sorrel's Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer. Known as a pioneer of the social history of the American soldier, Bell Wiley's work is notable for his analysis of the "plain people" and the experiences of the ordinary rank-and-file.

Bell Wiley died on April 4, 1980.