The diary of Keziah Brevard evokes the mundane concerns of the plantation period. It also documents her reflections on the events leading up to the American Civil War: the election of Abraham Lincoln, South Carolina's secession convention and the attack on Fort Sumter.
Eliza Lucas Pinckney was one of the most distinguished women of colonial America, pioneering the large-scale cultivation of indigo in South Carolina. Her letters reveal an eventful life with myriad interests, changing politics, innovative ideas about slavery, and an unusually happy marriage.
The wife of a physician, mother of ten children, and mistress of five slaves, Tryphena Blanche Holder Fox, fought the isolation of her adopted home by maintaining a lively correspondence with family and friends in Massachusetts. This work provides a candid look at middle-class southern life.