The Civil War diaries of Cassie Fennell : a young Confederate woman in North Alabama, 1859-1865

Fennell, Cassie 1842-1884 (author.). Snow, Whitney Adrienne, 1985- (editor.).

Summary: "Born near Guntersville, Alabama, Catherine (Cassie) Fennell was nineteen when the Civil War began. Starting with her time at a female academy in Washington, DC, the diaries continue through the war's end and discuss civilian experiences in Alabama and the Tennessee Valley. Fennell was fairly well off and highly educated, moving easily in very elite social circles. Most of her relatives were staunch Confederates, and the war took its toll, with multiple members of her family killed or captured. As she recounts the consequences of war-the downward spiral of the family fortune, the withering of hope at news from the battlefront, and the general uncertainty of civilian life in the South-Fennell's diaries constitute one of the few contemporaneous records of north Alabama, including the shelling and burning of Guntersville, which has been poorly documented in the historiography of the Civil War. Editor Whitney Snow's compilation adds to the now growing genre of women's Civil War diaries"--

Record details

ISBN: 9781621906063
ISBN: 162190606X
ISBN: 9781621906070
Physical Description: print
xxi, 337 pages : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 24 cm.
Publisher: Knoxville : The University of Tennessee Press, [2020]

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 307-326) and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Machine generated contents note: 1. When the Sun Shone Brightly: Schoolgirl Days in Washington, DC, September 12, 1859 -- February 4, 1860 -- 2. Discord and Distance: Making the Most of Circumstances, March 19, 1860 -- July 4, 1860 -- 3. Home in Marshall County, Alabama: Lincoln's Election and the Dawn of War, July 1860 -- December 1861 -- 4. "Yonder Come the Yankees": Burned Cotton and Profound Sorrow, 1862 -- 5. Awful Hard Times: Prices, Shortages, and Stresses on the Home Front, 1863 -- 6. Plunged into Grief and Silent Suffering: The Death of a Father and Capture of Two Brothers, 1864 -- 7. "The Worst Can Hurt Us but Little": The Dusk of War and an Anguished Peace, 1865.