num_pages: 148
description: The diary of Keziah Brevard documents one plantation mistress's reflections on the momentous events that shook the South during the months leading up to the Civil War: the election of Abraham Lincoln, South Carolina's secession convention, and the attack on Fort Sumter. A childless middle-aged widow, Brevard lived nine miles from Columbia, South Carolina, with her slaves as her only companions. In her diary she recorded everyday stewardship of two plantations, a farm, and a gristmill. In the journal Brevard also grappled with her most private struggles, including her vacillation about the morality of secession and slavery, her fear of abolitionists, and her sense of foreboding about the coming conflict.
language: English
title: A Plantation Mistress on the Eve of the Civil War: The Diary of Keziah Goodwyn Hopkins Brevard, 1860-1861
titlecomplete: A Plantation Mistress on the Eve of the Civil War: The Diary of Keziah Goodwyn Hopkins Brevard, 1860-1861
genres: Nonfiction, History, Civil War, Biography Memoir, Memoir, Biography
ratings_count: 30
series: Women's Diaries and Letters of the South
publisher: University of South Carolina Press