The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07.
De Forest, John William
(d fôr´st, fr´) (KEY) , 18261906, American author, b. Seymour, Conn. He served in the Civil War, chiefly as a captain. His vivid accounts of battle scenes in Louisiana and Sheridans Shenandoah valley campaign, published in Harpers Monthly, were among the finest contemporaneous war records. Best known as a novelist, he was the author of Kate Beaumont (1872), a study of South Carolina culture, and Miss Ravenels Conversion from Secession to Loyalty (1876), the first realistic novel of the Civil War.