Excerpt from Sarah Morgan's Diary...

[dawna]

<u>June 16, 1862</u>

This war has brought out wicked, malignant feelings that I did not believe could dwell in woman's heart. I see some with the holiest eyes, so holy one would think the very spirit of Charity lived in them and all Christian meekness, go off in a mad tirade of abuse and say with their holy eyes wonderously changed, "I hope God will send down plagues, yellow fever and famine on these vile Yankees, and that not one will escape death." O what unutterable horror that remark causes me as often as I hear it! I think of the many mothers, wives, and sisters who wait as anxiously, pray as fervently in their far away lonesome homes for their dear ones as we do here; I fancy them waiting day after day for the footsteps that will never come, growing more sad, lonely, and heartbroken as the days wear on; I think of how awful it would be to me if one would say, "your brothers are dead," how it would crush all life and happiness out of me; and I say, God forgive these poor women! They know not what they say! O woman! Into what loathesome violence you have debased your holy mission!} God will punish us for our hardheartedness.

[thea_447]

Although I have not been following this thread, or any others since Ivan came to my town and I've been without power, I was wondering this: Has it been mentioned on this thread that Sarah Morgan is not a true Southerner, that she is a transplanted New Yorker? Just wondering.

I saw this book down at my sister's house yesterday and she happened to mention that to me.

[jenna]

Sounds like Sarah could have been a hypocrit then hey? Or did her heart really belong to the south in the first place? Maybe she was a souther woman born in the north and found her way home.

Glad to hear you survivied Ivan. Hopefully you guys will have better weather the rest of the season, but I hear that the Atlantic is just a brewing with the alphabet at the moment. Jeanne, Lisa, and I forget the guy's name, but they say he's suppose to just stay out in the Atlantic.

Jenna

[dawna]

Thea:

I too am glad that you're back safe and sound and hopefully life is returning to normal.

I'm confused about the information that you found on Sarah Morgan as her book states (and other information) that she was born in New Orleans and moved to Baton Rouge when she was eight years old. Sarah developed a deep hatred for the North after the Union army sacked B.R. and she apparently harboured these feelings for the rest of her life.

In 1873, Sarah married Frank Dawson, an Englishman, and they moved to Charleston, S.C. in 1874. Did the information that you received from your sister suggest that Sarah had been raised in N.Y.?

Dawna

[thea_447]

Dawna,

I am so sorry. I have talked with my sister and she now realizes that she was wrong in what she told me. And she is mortified that I have to make a retraction on the boards! <grin> (It's no big deal for me since I have made more than one mistake before and will do so again.)

Here is what my sister had to say about Sarah Morgan in an email to me today:

Thea, No, it is NOT correct. Dawna is right. She was not from New
York. Sorry, my recollection was wrong. I think Steph gave this book to me and it's been some time since I read it. She wanted to read it after I did but when I told her a lot of it just made me mad, she didn't want to read it. I'll loan you the book, and then I'll re-read it myself. Sorry my mouth will cause you a retraction!! I just know that lots of her writing doesn't sound "Southern" - - what can I say? -

- much of her writing sounds Yankee-like to me. She is certainly not
what we usually call a "Flower of the South." The book is very
interesting even if you fume your way through portions of it! Sarah
Morgan certainly did not suffer from low self-esteem!! She
questioned the world into which she was born - - one where sons were
educated and women's roles were subordinate, etc.

Here are some quotes from the book "Sarah Morgan: The Civil War Diary
of a Southern Woman":

"Sarah Ida Fowler Morgan, the seventh child and the youngest of four
daughters, was born at the Morgan home on Esplanade Avenue on February 28, 1842, during the time that her father was collector for the port of New Orleans." p. xvii

"If we look for an explanation for her questioning spirit, beyond the
vagaries of personality itself, we should not overlook the fact that
her father was not born into Southern society but came to it in his
young manhood. A native of New Jersey, born at Prospect, his
grandfather's estate near Princeton, Thomas Gibbes Morgan grew up in
Pennsylvania. He and his brother Morris Morgan settled in Baton Rouge sometime in the 1820s. The brother's marriage to one of the daughters of Colonel Philip Hicky would give him a place in the planter society, and Thomas Gibbes Morgan earned for himself a high standing in the community with his law practice and his successful pursuit of public office.

After the death of his first wife, Eliza Ann McKennan, he married in
1830 Sarah Hunt Fowler, also Northern-born, daughter of a former
officer in the British army, but orphaned at an early age and reared on a Louisiana plantation by her kinsman and guardian George Mather, who was connected to the Hickys by marriage. Thus, the diarist's father, not of the planter class himself, was nevertheless allied with it and moved within its circles." pp. xvii, xviii

". . . 'I confess myself a rebel, body and soul. Confess? I glory in it?' On one level she (Sarah Morgan) is identifying herself as a loyal Southerner ---not, to be sure, one of the noisy "Patriot women" she despises---but her diary makes unmistakably clear that she was a rebel in other ways that mattered.

It is what she was rebelling against that makes her so interesting and so important: for one thing, the hypocrisies and tyranny of the society she had grown up in; the restraints imposed on her as a woman; in general, ignorance and stupidity, and---yes---bad manners. Again and again she voices her contempt for the role she is expected to play: the adoring and submissive wife, the loving and attentive mother. At one point she dreams of living out her life far away in a quiet cottage with a sign over the door that says "No gentlemen or children admitted." Her words seem to resound all the more when we recall her age when she wrote them." p. xxiii

[dawna]

Please Thea, there is absolutely no reason to apologize. I thought perhaps there might be two Sarah Morgans but no matter how much I researched, I could only find the Sarah Morgan Dawson who I've just finished reading...a true Southern woman.

Dawna