Astonishing, tragic, and remarkable, the journal of Sarah Haynsworth Gayle, wife of early Alabama governor John Gayle, is among the most widely studied and seminal accounts of antebellum life in the American South. This is the first complete edition of the journal in print. aBereft of the companionship of her often-absent husband, Sarah considered her journal OC a substitute for social intercourseOCO during the period from 1827 to 1835. It became the social and intellectual companion to which she confided stories that ...
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Astonishing, tragic, and remarkable, the journal of Sarah Haynsworth Gayle, wife of early Alabama governor John Gayle, is among the most widely studied and seminal accounts of antebellum life in the American South. This is the first complete edition of the journal in print. aBereft of the companionship of her often-absent husband, Sarah considered her journal OC a substitute for social intercourseOCO during the period from 1827 to 1835. It became the social and intellectual companion to which she confided stories that reflected her personal life and the world of early Alabama. Sarah speaks directly to us of her loneliness, the challenges of child rearing, her fear of and frustration with the management of slaves, and the difficulty of balancing the responsibilities of a socially prominent woman with her familyOCOs slender finances. The poor condition of the journal and its transcripts, sometimes disintegrated or reassembled in the wrong order, has led historians to misinterpret GayleOCOs words. GayleOCOs descendants, AlabamaOCOs famed Gorgases, deliberately obscured or defaced many passages. Using archival techniques to recover the text and restore the correct order, Sarah Wiggins and Ruth Truss reveal the unknown story of SarahOCOs economic hardships, the question of her husbandOCOs OC temperance, OCO and her opium use. The only reliable and unexpurgated edition of Sarah GayleOCOs journal, now enhanced with a fascinating introduction and inset notes, "The Journal of Sarah Haynsworth Gayle, 1827OCo1835," is a robust and gripping account and will be of inestimable value to our understanding of antebellum society, religion, intellectual culture, and slavery. Published in cooperation with the University Libraries, The University of Alabama, with further financial support from the Library Leadership Board, the University Libraries, The University of Alabama.a"
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