Parthenia Antoinette Hague

A young schoolteacher, Parthenia Antoinette Hague lived in southern Alabama, in the heart of the plantation society and one of the regions most loyal to secession and to the Confederacy. Hague, whose three brothers fought for the South, describes her feelings of regret and worry over leaving the Union. The blockade of southern ports by a Union fleet means that the Alabamians must depend on their own resourcefulness to survive, an effort to preserve what Hague sees as a paradise on earth. She also reveals a strong pride in the South's gentility and hospitality, extended even to treacherous northern preachers come to spy on the homes of her neighbors.

On a glorious sunshiny morning in the early summer of 1861 I was on my way to the school-house on the plantation of a gentleman who lived near Eufaula...