November 11, 1835 – September 25, 1901
General Sir Arthur Lyon Fremantle was a British army officer and author of <i>Three Months in the Southern States</i>, a popular book based upon his travels through the Confederate States of America during the spring and summer of 1863.
Arthur Lyon Fremantle was a British citizen born on November 11, 1835. He was the son of Major General John Fremantle and Agnes Lyon. Like his father and grandfather before him, Fremantle graduated from Sandhurst, the initial training center for British army officers. In 1852, Fremantle began a long career in the British army, eventually reaching the rank of full general with the Coldstream Guards.
In 1863, Fremantle took a leave of absence to travel to North America to observe the American Civil War. He arrived in Mexico on April 2, 1863 and entered the Confederate States of America through Texas. During the next three months, Fremantle traveled extensively through the South. Throughout his journey, Fremantle kept a detailed diary of his observations. His journal documented meeting many Confederate dignitaries and army officers, including President Jefferson Davis, Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin, Secretary of War James Seddon, and Generals Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston, James Longstreet, A.P. Hill, John Bell Hood, and J.E.B. Stuart. Fremantle's diary also recounts his eyewitness view of the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1-July 3, 1863).
After his travels through the Confederacy, Fremantle passed through Union lines in time to witness the draft riots in New York in July 1863. When he returned to England, Fremantle published his diary in 1864, as a book titled, Three Months in the Southern States. The book was popular in England until the Civil War ended. After a distinguished career in the British army, Fremantle died on the Isle of Wight on September 25, 1901.
Three quarters of a decade after his death, Fremantle was popularized in author Michael Shaara's 1974 historical novel, The Killer Angels, and its film adaptation, Gettysburg, which was released in 1993.
