When the World Ended: The Diary of Emma LeConte

by Emma LeConte

Book Overview

"I wonder if the new year is to bring us new miseries and sufferings," seventeen-year-old Emma LeConte wrote in her diary on December 31, 1864. In fact, the worst was yet to come. Her later entries portray the city of Columbia, South Carolina, like much of the South, under the grip of Sherman's army. No reader of this diary is likely to forget the defiant, well-bred Emma, who describes a family's anxieties and brave attempts to get on with life while...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080328151X
• ISBN13: 9780803281516
• Release Date: October 1987
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Length: 124 Pages
• Weight: 0.42 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

The Best

The United States is built on ruination. Emma survived but the promise that the Constitution had been for mankind perished with Columbia. I share Emma's story with many people who are better for knowing it. You might benefit from reading it as well.

The strength of spirit

Though Emma writes from the perspective of the losing side of the Civil War, and though her beliefs on race clash greatly with our times, her persistence in the face of horrible suffering is a magnificent example to us all. She stands as testimony to the powerful spirit of the South and of Southern women in particular. Were we as committed to the ideals of our day as she was to those of her day, ours would be a powerful society indeed. Her diary is all the more shocking when you realize that she was only seventeen when she began writing