Two Civil Wars is both an edition of an unusual Civil War--era
double journal and a narrative about the two writers who composed
its contents. The initial journal entries were written by
thirteen-year-old Celeste Repp while a student at St. Mary's
Academy, a prominent but short-lived girls school in midcentury
Baton Rouge. Celeste's French compositions, dating from 1859 to
1861, offer brief but poignant meditations, describe seasonal
celebrations, and mention by name both her headmistress, Matilda
Victor, and French instructor and priest, Father Darius Hubert.
Immediately following Celeste's prettily decorated pages a new
title page intervenes, introducing ""An Abstract Journal Kept by
William L. Park, of the U.S. gunboat Essex during the American
Rebellion."" Park's diary is a fulsome three-year account of
military engagements along the Mississippi and its tributaries, the
bombardment of southern towns, the looting of plantations,
skirmishes with Confederate guerillas, the uneasy experiment with
""contrabands"" (freed slaves) serving aboard ship, and the mundane
circumstances of shipboard life. Very few diaries from the inland
navy have survived, and this is the first journal from the ironclad
Essex to be published. Jeffrey has read it alongside several
unpublished accounts by Park's crewmates as well as a later memoir
composed by Park in his declining years. It provides rare insight
into the culture of the ironclad fleet and equally rare firsthand
commentary by an ordinary sailor on events such as the sinking of
CSS Arkansas and the prolonged siege of Port Hudson. Jeffrey
provides detailed annotation and context for the Repp and Park
journals, filling out the biographies of both writers before and
after the Civil War. In Celeste's case, Jeffrey uncovers surprising
connections to such prominent Baton Rouge residents as the diarist
Sarah Morgan, and explores the complexity of wartime allegiances in
the South through the experiences of Matilda Victor and Darius
Hubert. She also unravels the mystery of how a southern youngster's
school scribbler found its way into the hands of a Union sailor. In
so doing, she provides a richly detailed picture of occupied Baton
Rouge and especially of events surrounding the Battle of Baton
Rouge in August 1862. These two unusual personal journals, linked
by curious happenstance in a single notebook, open up intriguing,
provocative, and surprisingly complementary new vistas on
antebellum Baton Rouge and the Civil War on the Mississippi.
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