The Leverett Letters
Subtitle: Correspondence of a South Carolina Family, 1851-1868
Contributors: Frances Wallace Taylor (Editor)
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
Published: June 2000
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 528
ISBN-13: 9781570033339
Subjects: American history: c 1800 to c 1900; Biography: historical; Civil war; Other prose: 19th century; c 1800 to c 1900; United States - Civil War; History - U.S.; History: American; South Carolina; United States - 19th Century; United States - State & Local - General
First sentence: "It will be an extreme disadvantage to you all your life, not to be able to make easy use of your pen," Mary Maxcy Leverett lectured to one of her sons in May 1863 on the art of letter writing.
Description: "The 230 letters collected in this volume paint a portrait of southern life from the late antebellum era through Reconstruction.".

"Mary and her husband, Charles Leverett, an Episcopal clergyman and low country planter, raised five girls and four boys in Beaufort District near McPhersonville and in Richland District just outside Columbia. The family's correspondence, often written in a consciously literary style, describes the mundane and the extraordinary with equal vitality.

Revealing intimate perspectives on the war from the battlefield and the home front, the letters recount everyday sacrifices and landmark events, including the death of the commanding officer at Fort Sumter and the burning of Columbia. In addition, they provide insight into the importance of education, the challenges of providing for a large household, and the interactions between black and white for a family in many ways representative of the slaveholding planter class.".

"Unlike most collections of Civil War letters, the Leverett correspondence is remarkable for its inclusion of letters written before and after the conflict."--BOOK JACKET.