A Confederate Lady Comes of Age: The Journal of Pauline DeCaradeuc Heyward, 1863-1888

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.