A Woman's Wartime Journal

An intimate diary opens a window onto a Georgia plantation just as Sherman’s forces sweep through the South. Written by a New‑England‑born schoolteacher who married into the old‑Southern planter class, the entries blend personal reflection with vivid observations of the landscape—towering oaks, blooming dogwoods, and endless cotton fields—just before the tide of war reaches her doorstep. Her voice captures the tension of a household caught between genteel domestic life and the looming presence of Union soldiers, offering a rare glimpse of daily routines, the relationships with the enslaved people who live and work on the estate, and the uneasy anticipation that swells in the quiet rooms of the house.

The journal’s early pages reveal how the arrival of “bluecoats” disrupts the rhythm of planting and harvest, while the author grapples with conflicting loyalties shaped by her abolitionist upbringing and her Southern ties. Readers are invited to sit beside her in the rocking chair by the window, feeling the heat of the Georgia spring and hearing the distant rumble of marching troops, as a world on the brink of transformation is recorded in ink that has faded but not lost its immediacy.