Daniel W. Cobb, a farmer and small slaveholder from Virginia's rural tidewater, was unhappily married, resentful of his prosperous in-laws, and terribly lonely. His closest friend was the diary he kept for more than thirty momentous years in American history, from 1842 until his death at age sixty-one in 1872.

The devout, plainspoken Cobb wrote in a conversational style, candidly recording his innermost thoughts. His diary's intimate account of a troubled marriage provides a painfully frank chronicle of incompatibility. The diary also illuminates the momentous impact of the Civil War and emancipation. Offering many insights into the oral culture from which he sprang, Cobb's Ordeal reveals the great differences that separate his world from our own.