In Joy and in Sorrow brings together some of the finest historians of the South in a sweeping exploration of the meaning of the family in this troubled region. In their vast canvas of the Victorian South, the authors explore the private lives of Senators, wealthy planters, and the belles of high society, along with the humblest slaves and sharecroppers, both white and black. Stretching from the height of the antebellum South's pride and power through the chaos of the Civil War and Reconstruction to the end of the century, these essays uncover hidden worlds of the Southern family,...

In April 1861, Dick and Tally Simpson, sons of South Carolina Congressman Richard F. Simpson, enlisted in Company A of the Third South Carolina Volunteers of the Confederate army. Their letters home--published here for the first time--read like a historical novel, complete with plot, romance, character, suspense, and tragedy. In their last year of college when the war broke out, Dick and Tally were hastily handed their diplomas so they could volunteer for military duty. Dick was twenty; Tally was twenty-two.
Well educated, intelligent, and thoughtful young men, Dick and Tally cared deeply...

This collection of letters and documents offers a rare glimpse into a young officer's interesting but short life. Mary A. Giunta's A Civil War Soldier of Christ and Country tells the story of the relationships between the headstrong John Rodgers Meigs and his family and friends; his heartwarming eagerness to please his demanding parents; his West Point experiences that include a meeting with Abraham Lincoln; and his life as a combatant in the Civil War. John Rodgers Meigs was the son of Union Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs, and his official correspondence reveals much about his...

Drawing on four generations of family correspondence --reflecting the hopes, fears, desires, frustrations, and failures of an American family touched by personal scandal-- this book presents the saga of the Hammonds of Redcliffe from before the Civil War to after the New Deal. Set in Redcliffe, the plantation home of the Hammonds, this sweeping collection of letters, many of them by women, recaptures a way of life that is gone forever as it provides fascinating insights into the reactions of the participants to disaster on the battlefield and on the homefront and into the agony of an eminent...

This set of diaries (1841-1864) brings to light the journal notations of James Henry Hammond, a prominent South Carolina planter and slaveholder. They reveal a man whose fortune and intellect combined to make him an important leader, but whose flaws kept him from true greatness.