In this annotated diary, Sallie McNeill chronicles thoughts, observations, and details of her daily life during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. This remarkably well-preserved document tells McNeill's story from her days as a student in the female department of Baylor College at Independence until her death in 1867. McNeill's story--common to the era and place and still intensely personal--lets readers glimpse the numbing expectations of a young woman's proper behavior, moral referencing of those living under the influence of the second Great Awakening, intellectual questions posed by...