The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
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A VIRGINIA GIRL IN THECIVIL WAR
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A VIRGINIA GIRL
IN THE CIVIL WAR
1861-1865
BEING A RECORD OF THE ACTUAL EXPERIENCES
OF THE WIFE OF A CONFEDERATE OFFICER
COLLECTED AND EDITED BY
MYRTA LOCKETT AVARY
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1903
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Copyright, 1903
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Published February, 1903v
INTRODUCTION
This history was told over the tea-cups.One winter, in the South, I had for my neighbora gentle, little brown-haired lady, whospent many evenings at my fireside, as I athers, where with bits of needlework in ourhands we gossiped away as women will. Idiscovered in her an unconscious heroine, andher Civil War experiences made ever an interestingtopic. Wishing to share with othersthe reminiscences she gave me, I seek to presentthem here in her own words. Just asthey stand, they are, I believe, unique, possessingat once the charm of romance andthe veracity of history. They supply a graphic,if artless, picture of the social life of oneof the most interesting and dramatic periodsof our national existence. The stories werenot related in strict chronological sequence,but I have endeavored to arrange them invithat way. Otherwise, I have made as fewchanges as possible. Out of deference to thewishes of living persons, her own and herhusband’s real names have been suppressedand others substituted; in the case of a fewof their close personal friends, and of somewhose names would not be of special historicalvalue, the same plan has been followed.
Those who read this book are admittedto the sacred councils of close friends, andI am sure they will turn with reverent fingersthese pages of a sweet and pure woman’s life—alife on which, since those fireside talksof ours, the Death-Angel has set his seal.
Memoirs and journals written not becauseof their historical or political significance, butbecause they are to the writer the natural expressionof what life has meant to him in themoment of living, have a value entirely apartfrom literary quality. They bring us close tothe human soul—the human soul in undress.We find ourselves without preface or apologyin personal, intimate relation with whatevermakes the yesterday, to-day, to-morrow ofthe writer. When this current of events andconditions is impelled and directed by a vitalviiand formative period in the history of a nation,we have only to follow its course to seewhat history can never show us, and what fictioncan unfold to us only in part—how thepeople thought, felt, and lived who were notmaking history, or did not know that theywere.
This is the essential value of A VirginiaGirl in the Civil War: it shows us simply, sincerely,and unconsciously what life meant to anAmerican woman during the vital and formativeperiod of American history. That thisA