Two Diaries: February-May, 1865 (Expanded, Annotated)

With Union troops literally in their backyard, two southern women of privilege recorded in their diaries the fall of the south in the last months of the American Civil War. "How much some people have suffered." Unable to see the suffering their southern culture has wrought for more than two centuries, the women seem only aware of the loss of those whose privilege was built on the bondage of others. Essential to the owning of a human being is the inability to see them as a human being. As Union "colored" troops are among the soldiers marching through their land, the women are terrified of what they may do or what they will stir up in the slaves that remain on plantations. They write of the "impudence" of some of their remaining slaves, as if a lifetime of bondage should not have been expected to embitter them and leave them with little politeness for their masters.