Old Plantation Days: Being Recollections of Southern Life Before the Civil War

In Short

Written as a personal memoir for the author's young granddaughter, this work presents a first-hand recollection of life on a wealthy South Carolina plantation before and during the Civil War. It follows the author's idyllic early years in Beaufort District, her education, her marriage in 1859, and the abrupt ruin of her world as war arrives. As Union forces advance, her family flees, their home is burned, and they face severe economic hardship during Reconstruction. The text has endured as a vivid, unvarnished period account that captures both the self-justifying romanticism of the antebellum elite and the raw logistical realities of wartime dislocation.

The Story

The narrative takes the form of an extended letter from a grandmother to her young descendant, written to preserve the memory of a society that has vanished. The author opens with her lineage, tracing her family to Huguenot ministers and colonial governors in South Carolina. She describes her childhood home in Beaufort District as a place of abundance, defined by broad responsibilities and patriarchal order. Her parents oversee extensive lands, hundreds of livestock, and dozens of domestic and field hands. Her mother manages the health, provisioning, and daily care of the plantation's enslaved population, while her father maintains open-handed hospitality, offering food, shelter, and fine saddle horses to any passing stranger.

As a girl, the author travels North for her education, attending schools in North Carolina, Columbia, and eventually Philadelphia and Princeton alongside her siblings. Returning home, she marries a local physician in 1859 in a dawn ceremony at the village church. Their early married life is immediately disrupted by the onset of hostilities. While visiting Charleston to introduce her newborn child to her husband's family, she witnesses the bombardment of Fort Sumter from the piazzas of a harbor house. Her husband soon joins the Confederate military as a surgeon, leaving the women and elderly family members to manage the estates amid mounting anxiety.

When General Sherman's troops cross the Savannah River, the peaceful routine shatters completely. The family is forced to abandon their home—leaving behind fully laden orange trees and historical heirlooms—to begin a northward flight that resembles an exodus of forty relatives and servants in carriages and wagons. They navigate ruined roads, burned public buildings, and severe food shortages, at one point subsisting on scorched corn and rice scraped from ashes. The family home in Robertville is burned to the ground, and their property is destroyed or confiscated.

The post-war era brings no immediate relief. Returning to the single pine-woods cabin left standing on their property, the family confronts near-starvation and the hostility of occupying troops. To survive, the author bakes bread and pies to sell to Union soldiers and relies on unexpected aid from a Northern benefactor, Mr. Saunders, who sends provisions and monetary loans. Years later, following her husband's death and financial betrayal by an agent who speculates away her remaining funds, the author moves North to educate her daughter, reflecting on the profound transformation of her life and country.

How It Unfolds

Recollections of a vanished world The author opens her letter to her granddaughter Dorothy, explaining her desire to record the customs, domestic routines, and family origins of pre-war South Carolina before her generation passes away entirely.

Life on the Beaufort plantation The narrative details the complex daily management of the family estate, focusing on her mother's oversight of the plantation nursery, the care of the sick, and the distribution of daily food and milk to the enslaved workers.

Education and youth The author describes her schooling in Columbia and the North, sharing personal anecdotes of her childhood—including a pet fawn that wore a sunbonnet and returned to the family home each spring from the wild.

Marriage and the onset of war After her 1859 wedding in Robertville, the author travels to Charleston with her infant daughter and witnesses the opening shots fired at Fort Sumter, marking the end of peaceful plantation life.

Flight before the Union army As Sherman's forces approach, the family hastily leaves their ancestral home and forms a large caravan of relatives and servants traveling north through mud, destroyed roads, and desolate, burned towns like Cheraw.

Hardships of Reconstruction Returning to a ruined landscape, the family shelters in a bare summer cabin, facing severe poverty and threat of starvation until saved by emergency provisions sent by a Northern friend.

A new life in the North Following her husband's death and the loss of her remaining capital through a trusted agent's failed investments, the author relocates to Philadelphia and later Vassar College, reflecting on her family's history and genealogy.

The People

• Mrs. N. B. De Saussure (Miss Nancy): The narrator and author. She grows up in privileged plantation surroundings, marries a young doctor, and must adapt to extreme physical hardship, displacement, and financial ruin following the defeat of the Confederacy.
• The Author's Mother: A highly educated, energetic plantation mistress who personally supervises her children's schooling, manages twenty-five house servants, directs daily food distribution, and oversees the care of sick slaves and infants.
• The Author's Father: A wealthy South Carolina planter descended from early colonial leaders. He is depicted as a benevolent patriarch who distributes free corn to poor neighbors during droughts and maintains open-house hospitality for all travelers.
• Dr. H. W. De Saussure, Jr.: The author's husband. A local physician who marries her in 1859 and later joins the Confederate army as a surgeon, serving in coastal hospital units until the end of the conflict.
• Mr. Saunders: A generous Northern gentleman who offers financial support and sends critical shipments of food, clothing, and funds to the author's family during their most desperate moments post-war.

In Its Own Voice

"The South as I knew it has disappeared; the New South has risen from its ashes, filled with the energetic spirit of a new age."

(Context: The author explains to her granddaughter why she feels compelled to write down her childhood memories.)

"The house was crowded with excited mothers and wives, who had sons and husbands in the fight, and every hour added to their distress and excitement..."

(Context: The author describes watching the opening bombardment of Fort Sumter from a waterfront balcony in Charleston.)

"We left our lovely home as if we had gone for a drive."

(Context: The family hastily abandons their estate as General Sherman's troops cross the nearby river.)

What It's Really About

The memoir centers on the complete collapse of a social and economic order, viewed through the lens of personal loss and domestic memory. It explores the contrast between the idealized, paternalistic self-image of the Southern planter class and the harsh, chaotic realities brought by total war and military occupation. Underneath the nostalgic surface lies an argument about resilience: how women accustomed to luxury adapted to manual labor, flight, and severe poverty. The text also unconsciously illustrates the deep ideological divides of the era, contrasting the author's affectionate memories of enslaved domestic servants with the jarring, immediate reality of emancipation and post-war racial tension.

Why Read It Today

This short text provides an unmediated, first-person primary account of the American Civil War from the perspective of an elite Southern woman. Readers interested in social history will appreciate its granular details of antebellum domestic management—from farm logistics and nursery care to wedding customs and travel conditions.

It is a short, accessible read, but it presents real historical difficulties. Modern readers must navigate the author's paternalistic framing of slavery, period racial attitudes, and defensive rationalizations of the plantation system that were common to early 20th-century Southern memoirs. The prose itself is clear, direct, and unpretentious, written with the conversational intimacy of a family legacy. Reading it today offers a vivid window into how historical trauma and sudden loss were processed, remembered, and reframed for future generations.

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