Free A Year in the South by Stephen V. Ash Page A

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    The moment was 1865. When that year began, the Old South—incarnated forty-seven months earlier as the Confederate States of America—still stood. When that year ended, the Old South was gone and a New South was taking shape.
    Surely no other sizable portion of the American people ever experienced so wrenching a year, or one so brimming with possibilities, as Southerners did in 1865. It was a year that began in war and ended in peace, a year that saw disunion give way to reconstruction, a year that marked the passage from slavery to freedom. The story of those people in that tumultuous time is not only fascinating but also instructive, for it can tell us much about how the New South came to be and about what the Old South was.
    Storytellers confront the same dilemma as painters and photographers: the broader their perspective, the more comprehensive their scene, but the less distinct their subjects’ features. A narrative that tries to embrace all the Southern people in 1865 risks reducing them to a faceless crowd. I have adopted a different approach that poses its own risks.
    In focusing on four individuals, I have sought a balance of breadth and depth, while obviously forfeiting any claim to comprehensiveness. I have selected Hughes, McDonald, Robertson, and Agnew from among many possible subjects in the belief that their stories would reflect something of the experience of Southerners as a whole in 1865. But if these four were in some ways typical, they were also in many ways unique, and much that is recounted herein is essentially personal, illuminating no lives but their own.
    This book begins with a prologue that introduces the characters and sketches their lives up to 1865. The four parts that follow move chronologically from the beginning to the end of 1865, with each part corresponding to a season of the year. The characters appear sequentially in each part, and an epilogue summarizes their lives after 1865.
    Although each of the four wrote a personal account of some sort, they also left a great deal unsaid. I have examined other sources to find out more about them and about the places they lived, the people they knew, and the events they lived through. Even so, much about these three men and this one woman remains obscure. What this book offers, therefore, is not the whole story but rather a vivid part of the story of four Southerners as they stepped across the threshold between the old world and the new.

    1. Major sites mentioned in the book

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
CPM
 
Mrs. Cornelia McDonald, A Diary with Reminiscences of the War and Refugee Life in the Shenandoah Valley, 1860–1865 (Nashville, 1934)
JCR
 
John C. Robertson Memoir, McClung Historical Collection, Knox County Public Library, Knoxville, Tennessee
LH
 
Louis Hughes, Thirty Years a Slave: From Bondage to Freedom (Milwaukee, 1897)
SAA
 
Samuel A. Agnew Diary, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

BIBLIOGRAPHY
    MANUSCRIPTS
    Academy Baptist Church, Tippah County, Mississippi, Minutes. Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson.
    Agnew, Samuel A., Diary. Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
    Alabama Salt Commissioner’s Quarterly Reports and Abstracts. Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery.
    Alabama State Salt Works Letter Book. William R. Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham.
    American Missionary Association, Tennessee Records. Amistad Research Center, Dillard University, New Orleans.
    Amnesty Papers (Case Files of Applications from Former Confederates for Presidential Pardons, 1865–1867). RG 94, M-1003, National Archives, Washington.
    Baker, Everard Green, Diary. Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
    Bedford, Benjamin W., Letterbook, 1853–1867. Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville.
    Berry, Joel H., Letter. Mississippi Department of Archives and