Originally published as A Southern Girl in '61, this edition has been enhanced by weaving historical information, photographs, illustrations and maps around Mrs. Wright's original 1905 biography of her rebel father and brother.From a southerner's point of view, 16 year old Miss Louise Wigfall describes the southern view of her state of Texas and then from inside the city of Washington as the tension mounts between the North and the South. She paints a picture with her words better than any modern historian of the war ...
Read More
Originally published as A Southern Girl in '61, this edition has been enhanced by weaving historical information, photographs, illustrations and maps around Mrs. Wright's original 1905 biography of her rebel father and brother.From a southerner's point of view, 16 year old Miss Louise Wigfall describes the southern view of her state of Texas and then from inside the city of Washington as the tension mounts between the North and the South. She paints a picture with her words better than any modern historian of the war between the "North and the South" and its aftermath. Being the daughter of a Confederate Congressman from Texas, she saw the war from the inside.Around this story the editor has woven in historical facts, photographs, maps and other information as he felt the story needed to bring it up to today's standards for eBook reading.Still holding her childhood letters in 1905, she writes: "In gathering the sad and happy memories of the years of which I write, I am actuated by two motives - one, that I am conscious that the days are passing, and that if done at all, the chronicle had best be written ere the eye that has seen these things grows dim and the memory faulty; and the other, that I would fain live in the thoughts of the children who shall come after me, and have their hearts, as they read this record, beat in unison with mine. Thus shall we be linked together in these memories."Her father's letters and her vivid memories reveal the reasons for the attack on Fort Sumpter and many of the battles of the Civil War that followed.1905... "My grandmother, in Providence, Rhode Island, had succeeded by some means in sending to us through the lines in 1864 $1,000 in gold. Without a moment's hesitation this precious metal was transmuted into Confederate bank notes, a large package of which, consisting of 500- and 100- dollar bills I have with me now [in 1905], a constant reminder of the implicit faith in the success of the good Cause that was lost. I am sure my father would have felt he was unfaithful to his country if he had admitted to himself that Confederate money was not as good as gold.It may not have been of the wisdom of this world, but it was beautiful, and I am glad he did it and I keep my bank notes and shall leave them to those that come after me, as an infallible proof that the civilization of the old South produced a race of men, who maintained what they believed to be their constitutional rights, sacrificed every material gain, and, giving freely of their own lives and the lives of their sons, would not withhold the baser treasures of silver and gold."
Read Less
