Sarah Morgan Dawson's A Confederate Girl's Diary , first published in expurgated form in 1913, is an eyewitness account of the Civil War in Louisiana. It is also a self-portrait of an unusual young woman who, though a member of the Southern aristocracy, was critical of that class's code of chivalry and the status it accorded to women--but not of the far more oppressed status of African Americans. The diary portrays her development in three years from a naive nineteen-year-old who has only recently encountered death for the first time in the loss of her favorite brother and her beloved father, to a mature woman who understands that sorrow and tragedy are inherent and inescapable parts of life. It also chronicles her transformation, as a result of her experiences in the war, from an opponent of secession to a strong partisan of the Southern cause who, nevertheless, could never bring...