The destruction and rebuilding of southern society as witnessed from the homefront
At the age of nineteen Pauline DeCaradeuc Heyward began keeping a journal in which she recorded the final years of the Civil War, including the destruction of her plantation home near Aiken, South Carolina; the hardship of the Reconstruction era; her marriage into a distinguished Charleston family; and her efforts to provide for her large family after her husband's death. A fascinating document that spans a traumatic quarter of a century, Heyward's diary offers intimate insights into the deprivation and devastation suffered by southern women during and after the Civil War.
Mary D. Robertson is an adjunct professor of history at Armstrong Atlantic State University in Savannah. She is the editor of Lucy Breckinridge of Grove Hill: The Journal of a Virginia Girl, 1862–1864.
"A unique and useful source …Pauline DeCaradeuc Heyward was a strong-minded, devoted daughter of Catholicism and the Confederacy; she was also a loving and resourceful woman who overcame tragedy to care for her family."—Journal of Southern History
"An interesting portrait of an articulate woman."—North Carolina Historical Review
"A particularly vivid description of a disintegrating society."—Georgia Historical Quarterly