Life in the South: From the Commencement of the War. Vol 1

Life in the South: From the Commencement of the War. Vol 1

“Miss Catherine Cooper Hopley was an English schoolteacher who had been living with relatives in Indiana a few years before going South to teach in 1860. She was a cultured, middle-class woman, a close observer who also read newspapers and kept herself well informed on current events. Her statements of fact are almost invariably correct. Being interested in life and customs, she found many admirable qualities in the Southerners and, even with a preconceived dislike of slavery, learned to understand the system. She found none of the horrors of slavery she had expected to see and even struggled hard to maintain the neutrality of a British subject. Until January 1862, she taught children on plantations in the Northern Neck of Virginia and south of Fredericksburg and was an instructor in a Baptist Female Seminary at Warrenton. Early in 1862, she went to Florida to teach in the family of Governor Milton on his plantation west of the Apalachicola River. Between trips to these various places, she spent much time in Richmond where she became acquainted with many high Confederate officials, including several congressmen, and formed high admiration for President Davis. On her way to Florida, she met General Lee at the railway station at Savannah. She traveled by railway, steamboat, and stage and liberally recorded her observations. Miss Hopley was a facile writer and her work is a valuable commentary on Southern plantation life during the first part of the Civil War. Variously attributed to Sarah L. Jones but definitely Miss Hopley, whose personal copy is in Virginia Historical Society, with marginal notes.”

Catherine Cooper Hopley

London,

1863.

Book

Catherine Cooper Hopley

Life in the South;from the commencement of the war. vol 1

London,

1863.

Book