| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Stephen V. Ash. A Year in the South: Four Lives in 1865. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2002. Pp. xiv, 289. $26.95.
Ordinary folk who have been dead for a century generally leave few traces. No longer directly remembered by anyone still alive today, they fade into the anonymity of old photographs, tombstones, and genealogical records. But there are rare exceptions among those who leave letters, a diary, or a memoir. Such documents breathe life back into people who would otherwise be forgotten.	1
Stephen V. Ash has undertaken a composite biographical study of four southerners who provided a detailed record of their inner lives at a key juncture in the history of the region. In 1865 the Civil War ended, the Confederacy disintegrated, and slavery ceased to exist. Using three memoirs and one diary, supplemented by voracious research into other sources, Ash has crafted an immensely readable book. Seen through the prism of four disparate individuals, the anguished transition from the Old South to the New comes into sharp and memorable focus.	2
Cornelia McDonald faced overwhelming adversity in 1865. Widowed in late 1864, she faced the task of trying to hold together a family of seven children. Without property, or a livelihood, or any means of external support, she and her brood lived as refugees in a rented home in Lexington, Virginia. Her troubles were made more acute because she had been born to privilege and found it almost impossible to reveal to others in genteel Lexington how desperate her plight had become.	. . .

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