Many have attempted to create a universal Southern identity during the American Civil War. While the works of Southern writers during the 1860s highlight the fact that experiences and perspectives greatly differed throughout the south, many southerners were, in fact, united by general patriotism towards the Confederacy. The wartime diaries of Sarah Morgan and Cornelia Peake McDonald provide small glimpses into two uniquely different parts of the Confederacy. Though experiencing many dissimilar events, both held a staunch Confederate patriotism that lasted through varying hardships.
Cornelia Peake McDonald’s wartime diary, entitled “A Woman’s Civil War: A Diary with Reminisces of the War, from March 1862,” describes the daily life of a wife and mother of nine children struggling to provide for her family while living on the front lines in Winchester, Virginia. At times, she and her children could even watch the battle from their front porch. Although from a middle class family and the wife of an officer in the Confederate army, McDonald struggled to provide sufficiently for her large family. Throughout the war, troops moved back and forth through Winchester, with an incessant fluctuation of control by north and south. Constantly in contact with various Union officers concerning the fate of her beloved home and family, McDonald managed to keep a staunch Confederate sentiment while befriending several Union officers and managing to keep her property relatively intact for quite some time.
Shortly after the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, the McDonalds decided to flee their poverty- stricken home for safety further behind the Southern lines. They were not alone; everyone realized the danger that surrounded them. McDonald records, “The whole town seemed to be trying to get away…few were willing to risk another Federal occupation.” Escaping to Amherst Courthouse, McDonald left most of her children in the care of a family friend, while taking two of her older children to Richmond to visit her husband, who was ailing, and possibly on his deathbed. Deciding to move the family to Lexington, McDonald retrieved her family and set about the difficult task of finding a home while waiting for her husband to gain enough strength to make the journey. There she stayed for the remainder of the war, fighting the desperate domestic battle that was then commonplace in the vast majority of the South- the crusade for food, for clothes, for warmth in winter, for a roof in rain: the crusade to keep a family together.
On the other hand, Sarah Morgan, only nineteen years old at the outbreak of the war, was from a wealthy, highly respected and aristocratic family in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Her wartime diary, consisting of five books in all, entitled “Sarah Morgan: The Civil War Diary of a Southern Woman,” not only holds a detailed account of her daily life throughout the war, but also a record of her feelings, her thought processes, and her philosophies of life and the world. While Morgan saw very little fighting, her family spent much of the war in fear of imminent attacks. In 1862, the northern army had arrived at Baton Rouge, and there were constant threats that the city would be shelled, as it was close to the river. Once, when a shelling commenced, men, women, and children all evacuated the city in great haste for fear of their lives, only to return a couple of days later to find their homes relatively untouched. Finally, however, after several more scares, the Morgan family decided to leave their beautiful, stately home.
First, the family stayed in Westover with Dr. Nolan. Morgan began her third diary by wondering, “Will the blank pages record the burning of Baton Rouge, and the loss of our all? Will the close of it find me running, or at last settled in what is to be our future dwelling in New Orleans?” How prophetic her words, foreshadowing much of what was to become of the Morgan family! Moving to General Carter’s plantation at Linwood to be out of the reach of the shells that bombarded Baton Rouge, Sarah and her sister Miriam remained there from August 1862 until April 1863. Then they departed for Clinton to meet their mother, and with her, to escape to the Union lines in New Orleans.
During their stay at Linwood, the Carters treated them as family. The pages of Morgan's diary record an enjoyment not to be found in those of McDonald’s journal, complete with a great multitude of soldier suitors constantly calling. Part way through their stay, in November 1862, Morgan had an accident while going to visit her brother Gibbes at a nearby Confederate camp in which the buggy they were riding in was overturned, and Sarah’s back severely injured. For about six months she was mostly confined to bed, not fully healed when they reached New Orleans at the end of April 1863. This accident colored her view of the war, being mostly confined to bed and constantly receiving the attentions of doting soldiers. She wrote almost daily of the occurrences around her, though rarely receiving accurate news about the Confederate army. Morgan herself never truly experienced the horrors or poverty of war. When those she loved, such as her mother and sister-in-law in Clinton, faced food shortages, the Morgans had the influence and resources to escape to the home of Morgan's unionist brother Judge Morgan in Union-held New Orleans. Their circumstances there were better than the troubles that were ever-increasing in the Confederacy, as neither crippled Sarah nor her weak mother could have survived.
Although McDonald and Morgan were from two very different areas of the Confederacy with vastly different positions, experiences and perspectives, there are many similarities to be found in the pages of their diaries. The primary similarity between McDonald and Morgan is their Confederate patriotism, which, despite the general loss of morale as the war progressed, remained unwavering. Both realized the treasonous natures of the books they wrote, yet continued to pick up their pens, attempting to accurately record what they faced each day. On May 15, 1863, McDonald records,
Last night I left this book in which I am writing lying on a table and went down stairs. Nell [her seven year old daughter] spied two officers approaching the house, and supposing they were coming for a search, first concealed the book and then went to see what they might want… I asked her why she did it, and she said she thought there might be something in it the Yankees ought not to see. I had not thought her knowing the character of the book.
Unable to vent her true sentiments publicly, McDonald daily recorded her staunch Confederate views, many of which would have placed her in dire trouble if read by a northern official. On many occasions, Morgan denotes the treasonous nature of her writings. “At first I avoided mention of political affairs, but now, there is nothing else to be thought of; if it is not burnt for treason, I will like to look it over one of these days- if I live.” Later, on June 29, 1862, while still in Yankee-occupied Baton Rouge, she again mentioned the treacherous nature of her book, writing, “one line of this, surrounded as we are by soldiers, and liable to have our houses searched at any instant, would be sufficient indictment for high treason.”
Another form of patriotism, thought short-lived on both accounts, was the proud public display of the Confederate flag. In July 1862, McDonald records “I am to have a small Confederate flag on the tea table tonight to celebrate our 4th of July.” And the next day she states, “We did celebrate our fourth…The little flag waved over the table.” Morgan is a bit bolder in her display in 1862, recording,
“All devices signs, and flags of the confederacy shall be suppressed.” So says Picayune Butler. Good. I devote all my red, white, and blue silk to the manufacture of Confederate flags…. Henceforth, I wear one pinned to my bosom- the man who says take it off, will have to pull it off for himself; the man who dares attempt it- well! A pistol in my pocket will fill up the gap.
In addition to their patriotism, McDonald and Morgan’s writings place a noteworthy importance on home and family. Neither relish the idea of relinquishing her home and both cling to what little hope they have until forced to flee to preserve their lives and those of their families. Next, although staunchly Confederates, both learned that the soldiers of the Union Army, though their enemies, were humans too, with home and family of their own. Once, McDonald records of a Union soldier who was punished by his commanding officer for stealing milk from her cow, “He had such a human look, so dejected and wretched, that Yankee as he was, and milk the cow as he did, I could not help feeling self reproach at being the cause of his punishment.” Morgan also ascribed to this courteous sentiment, as she wrote, “I wont be rude to any one in my own house, Yankee or Southern, say what they will.” Later, she also wrote, “I am a Southerner, and not ashamed to say I admire our foes.”
The final element of uniformity between the diaries of McDonald and Morgan is that both have family members fighting in the war and both deal with the grief of death. McDonald suffered the loss of a son in battle, while her husband became so weak and ill from starvation and lack of proper medical care that eventually he passed away as well near the end of the war. In an entry on September 26, 1862, McDonald records the events surrounding the death of her infant daughter- an occasion that deeply effects the rest of her writings, as she continues to grieve this loss, mentioning it frequently.
Morgan also faced the loss of loved ones and was most deeply affected by the loss of both her father to an asthmatic illness and her brother “Hal” in an unfair duel, both in early 1861. Throughout her five books she frequently longs for their presence. She deeply respected her brother. Likewise, she acutely grieved the passing of her father and often would write as though talking to him. At the very end of the war, she also sadly loses two of her three brothers who fought in the Confederate army- Gibbes and George.
Although there are numerous similarities in the perspectives of McDonald and Morgan, there are also several differences. The most obvious contrast between them is their respective stations in life. While McDonald is a wife and mother of nine children and works throughout the war simply to clothe and feed her children, Morgan lives a life of relative ease in which, although losing one lovely home, she moves to another equally fine setting. She continues to have additional suitors with whom she can toy and flirt. Never does Morgan seem to question the source of her next meal, while McDonald often fears that her family will die of starvation. Morgan, always knowing a life of luxury, laments the loss of several dresses, while McDonald sadly writes,
My poor little boys were still barefooted, and it made me so sorry their little red feet as they went out in the frost of November mornings. Night after night I laid awake, trying to devise plans for getting them shoes, and paying for the weaving of the cloth.
Morgan experienced mere inconveniences as compared to McDonald's fight for survival.
Next, because of their respective geographic locations in the Confederacy, each woman saw quite different sides of the war. Morgan, once outside of Baton Rouge, saw very little fighting of any kind. Once, on August 6, 1862, while still in Westover, Louisiana, she records one encounter with the Confederate ironclad Arkansas which, old and virtually unusable, was burned by her own Southern sailors, who evacuated when they realized they were no match for their Federal opponent.
McDonald, however, living directly on the front lines in Westchester, Virginia, records that skirmishes and enemy occupations were a part of daily life. One day she even found a severed foot in her garden! On June 8, 1862, she records one of many times in which various Union soldiers tried to occupy her home and destroy her property. She was forced to apply to the commanding officer for protection for her large and impoverished brood, who would surely all die if turned out of their home. She often witnessed unspeakable acts of violence committed against her neighbors and friends. For example, when a certain Mr. Wilson allowed Confederate men to stay in his home, Union soldiers rewarded him so that he “was not quite dead when found; a sabre across the head had struck him down, and after he fell a pistol had been fired at his temple, so near that his eye was shot out, and his face filled with powder.”
A final difference between the two women is their views of slavery. The McDonald’s did not own a slave; although a relative lent them a slave women to help care for the large family. The woman became a part of the family as any domestic servant and, when her master threatened to send her further south as the Union advanced toward Winchester, McDonald begged for the slave to stay with her family. Later, in her “Recollections of 1861” which she appended to her wartime diary, McDonald discussed her true beliefs about slavery.
I never in my heart thought slavery was right, and having in my childhood seen some of the worst instances of its abuse, and in my youth, when surrounded by them and daily witnessing what I considered great injustice to them, I could not think how the men I most honored and admire, my husband among the rest, could constantly justify it, and not only that, but say that it was a blessing to the slave, his master, and the country; and (even now I say it with a feeling of shame), that the renewal of the slave trade would be a blessing and benefit to all, if only the consent of the world could be obtained to its being made lawful.
Though surrounded by anti-abolitionist sentiments, McDonald appears to have independently realized the evils of slavery.
In contrast, Morgan, although speaking of her own slaves and the issue in general on several occasions, does not seem to have as maturely considered the matter to develop a decided opinion one way or the other. She shows a certain naïveté in that she appears to be generally swayed by the cultural norm of the day in Baton Rouge. On April 19, 1863, en route to New Orleans, Morgan mentions a trusted family slave, Tiche, as she writes in a paragraph describing the lack of bedding one night,
To my share fell a double blanket, which, as Tiche had not cover, I unfolded, and as she used the foot of my bed for a pillow, gave her the other end of it, thus, (tell this not in Yankee land, for it will never be credited) actually sleeping under the same bed clothes with our black, shiny negro nurse!”
With Confederate patriotism as the common thread between them, Cornelia Peake McDonald and Sarah Morgan depict two very different accounts of everyday life in the south during the Civil War. Although different in their respective stations in life as well as their resources and wartime experiences, the two are unified in their staunch Southern sentiments that drive them to remain loyal to the Confederacy throughout the trials and hardships of war.
Bibliography
McDonald, Cornelia Peake. A Woman's Civil War: A Diary, with Reminiscences of the War, from March 1862. Edited by Minrose C. Gwin. New York, New York: Gramercy Books, 2003. 3-269.
Morgan, Sarah. The Civil War Diary of a Southern Woman. Edited by Charles East. New York, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991. 5-612.
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