This book examines the life and work of Civil War-era Texas humorist, reporter, and editor, Rensselaer Reed Gilbert. Gilbert wrote several hundred columns during the Civil War that included news, editorials, and comic sketches for the Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph. An ardent Confederate nationalist, Gilbert was a strong supporter of states' rights and the economic institution of slavery - his status as a Yankee transplant from Vermont notwithstanding. To date, humour research in this field has focused on a limited canon of the nineteenth century's comic voices. High Private promises expansion, introducing readers to a unique voice operating in the Trans-Mississippi Theater of the Civil War