author
Amanda Alcenia Strickland Washington
b. 1846
A rare memoirist of the Civil War South, she wrote with an eye for vivid anecdote and everyday courage. Her remembered scenes from 1860s Louisiana offer a personal, often intimate view of life during a turbulent era.
1 Audiobook
How Beauty Was Saved, and Other Memories of the Sixties
by Amanda Alcenia Strickland Washington
About the author
Born in 1846, Amanda Alcenia Strickland Washington is known for How Beauty Was Saved, and Other Memories of the Sixties, published in 1907. The book also appeared under the name Mrs. James Madison Washington, a form of authorship common in her era.
Her work looks back on the American Civil War years through stories and recollections set in Louisiana, especially around the Baton Rouge region. Rather than giving a formal military history, she focused on lived experience: local incidents, family life, fear, resilience, and the ways women and girls navigated wartime disruption.
Little confirmed biographical information was easy to verify beyond her birth year, authorship, and the publication history of her book. Even so, that memoir has kept her name in circulation as a distinctive firsthand voice preserving memories of the 1860s.