Lanterna Rally

Author: Sarah Morgan Dawson

Publisher:

Published: 2015-04-11

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 9781511678155

"Remarkable.... Sarah Morgan Dawson reminds us that the best history is heartfelt and heart-seared....A thoroughly authentic voice of the war." -Ken Burns "An intimate portrait of her personal journey....The life of an articulate, passionate, and intelligent young woman from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. By locating her own story within a grand narrative of war, Sarah left a legacy that has helped historians to examine southern women's varied wartime experiences and the ways in which these women rebuilt their lives and identities during Reconstruction. This process, along with its long-term effects, has become one of the most contentious issues in southern women's history." -Giselle Roberts, "The Correspondence of Sarah Morgan and Francis Warrington Dawson" Sarah Morgan Dawson, a native of Baton Rogue, Lousiana, recorded her experiences as a young woman living in the Confederacy during the War Between the States. The war divided her family when her eldest brother decided to remain loyal to the Union and three of her other brothers accepted positions in the Confederate Army. Her diary is filled with personal insights and emotion and is one of the more exceptional first-hand accounts of the war years of 1861-1865. A Confederate Girl's Diary, written from March 1862 to June 1865, discourses on topics as ordinary as household routines and romantic intrigues to those as unsettling as concern for her brothers who were fighting 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, Sarah Morgan Dawson's diary provides a remarkable historical perspective on life behind the lines of this bitter conflict.