In 1863, while living in Clarksville, Tennessee, Martha Ann
Haskins, known to friends
and family as Nannie, began a diary. "The Diary of Nannie Haskins
Williams: A Southern
Woman's Story of Rebellion and Reconstruction, 1863-1890" provides
valuable insights into
the conditions in occupied Middle Tennessee. A young, elite
Confederate sympathizer,
Nannie was on the cusp of adulthood with the expectation of
becoming a mistress in
a slaveholding society. The war ended this prospect, and her life
was forever changed.
Though this is the first time the diaries have been published in
full, they are well known
among Civil War scholars, and a voice-over from the wartime diary
was used repeatedly
in Ken Burns's famous PBS program "The Civil War."
Sixteen-year-old Nannie had to come to terms with Union occupation
very early in
the war. Amid school assignments, young friendship, social events,
worries about her
marital prospects, and tension with her mother, Nannie's entries
also mixed information
about battles, neighbors wounded in combat, U.S. Colored troops,
and lawlessness in the
surrounding countryside. Providing rare detail about daily life in
an occupied city, Nannie's
diary poignantly recounts how she and those around her continued
to fight long after
the war was over--not in battles, but to maintain their lives in a
war-torn community.
Though numerous women's Civil War diaries exist, Nannie's is
unique in that she also
recounts her postwar life and the unexpected financial struggles
she and her family experienced
in the post-Reconstruction South. Nannie's diary may record only
one woman's
experience, but she represents a generation of young women born
into a society based
on slavery but who faced mature adulthood in an entirely new world
of decreasing farm
values, increasing industrialization, and young women entering the
workforce. Civil War
scholars and students alike will learn much from this firsthand
account of coming-of-age
during the Civil War.
Minoa D. Uffelman is an associate professor of history at Austin
Peay State University.
Ellen Kanervo is professor emerita of communications at Austin
Peay State University.
Phyllis Smith is retired from the U.S. Army and currently teaches
high school science in
Montgomery County, Tennessee. Eleanor Williams is the Montgomery
County, Tennessee,
historian.
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