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Emmala Reed (1839-1893) may not have watched the unfolding of the
Civil War from the front lines, but she nonetheless witnessed the
collapse of the Confederacy. With the fall of Charleston and the
burning of Columbia, waves of refugees flooded into her hometown of
Anderson, South Carolina. Returning Confederate soldiers passed
through this isolated settlement to get rations of cornmeal on
their journey home, and eventually Union troops occupied the town.
All the while this twenty-five-year-old, unmarried woman recorded
what she observed from Echo Hall, her family home on Anderson's
Main Street. Reed's journals from 1865 and 1866 present a detailed
account of life in western South Carolina as war turned to
reconstruction. Reed's postwar writings are particularly important
given their rarity - many Civil War diarists stopped writing at
war's end. As the daughter of Judge Jacob Pinckney Reed, a
prominent lawyer, merchant, and prewar Unionist, Reed offers a
perspective different from the usual ardent secessionist. than on a
plantation or in an urban center. In her journals Reed captures the
disheartening, chaotic period known as Presidential Reconstruction,
the short span of time between the Confederate surrender and the
beginnings of Congressional Reconstruction. She describes the
apprehensions of people living in a relatively remote area at the
war's end, the wide-eyed, end-of-the-war rumors that circulated
throughout the South, and the steady procession of historically
noteworthy people who moved through Anderson, many of whom visited
her father at Echo Hall. Into her account of public travail Reed
intertwines details about her private life. She depicts social
engagements, religious events, and school activities while often
recording her hope for the return of her longtime suitor. Adding a
heart breaking twist to her chronicle, Reed writes candidly of her
anguish and humiliation when, at last, he comes home only to marry
another.
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