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    A Confederate Girl's Diary
    A Confederate Girl's Diary
    A Confederate Girl's Diary
    Audiobook13 hours

    A Confederate Girl's Diary

    Written by Sarah Morgan Dawson

    Narrated by LibriVox Community

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Sarah Morgan Dawson was a young woman of 20 living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, when she began this diary. The American Civil War was raging. Though at first the conflict seemed far away, it would eventually be brought home to her in very personal terms. Her family's loyalties were divided. Sarah's father, though he disapproved of secession, declared for the South when Louisiana left the Union. Her eldest brother, who became the family patriarch when his father died in 1861, was for the Union, though he refused to take up arms against his fellow Southerners. The family owned slaves, some of whom are mentioned by name in this diary. Sarah was devoted to the Confederacy, and watched with sorrow and indignation its demise. Her diary, written from March 1862 to June 1865, discourses on topics as normal as household routines and romantic intrigues to those as unsettling as concern for her brothers who fought in the war. Largely self-taught, she describes in clear and inviting prose, fleeing Baton Rouge during a bombardment, suffering a painful spinal injury when adequate medical help was unavailable, the looting of her home by Northern soldiers, the humiliation of life under General Butler in New Orleans, and dealing with privations and displacement in a region torn by war. She was a child of her time and place. Her inability to see the cruelty and indignity of slavery grates harshly on the modern ear. Regardless of how one feels about the Lost Cause, however, Sarah's diary provides a valuable historical perspective on life behind the lines of this bitter conflict. (Introduction by Christine Dufour)
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLibriVox
    Release dateAug 25, 2014
    Author

    Sarah Morgan Dawson

    American writer Sarah Morgan Dawson is best known for her Civil War diary, A Confederate Girl’s Diary. Born and raised in Louisiana, Dawson captured her thoughts and experiences of the Union occupation of her home state in diary entries from March 1862 to April 1865. After the death of her father, Dawson and her mother settled in South Carolina where she accepted an editorial position at a local newspaper, the News and Courier. Widowed in 1889, Dawson and her surviving son moved to Paris in 1899, where she continued to write until her death in 1909. Although Dawson had asked that her war-time diary be destroyed, her son published it posthumously in 1913.

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    Reviews for A Confederate Girl's Diary

    3.5/5

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    • 5/5
      This book is so honestly written from the perspective of a young but mature woman. It left me wanting more and wanting to know how her life turned out

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      None of the audiobooks on Librivox are narrated by professional voice actors.