Marion Glenn
11/18/2016
The year 1865 could be described as one of the most tumultuous periods in American history. It was the inevitable fallout following the civil war and represented an uncertain future for many southerners who now had to rebuild their lives after losing the war. The book A Year in the South by Stephen Ash, describes the exceedingly different lives of Louis Hughes a slave determined to obtain freedom, Samuel Agnew a man of God coming to grasp with his spiritual and worldly troubles, Cornelia McDonald a widow battling despair and poverty brought on by the war, and John Robertson a former Confederate soldier seeking to separate himself from the remanence of the war, all of whom struggled throughout this year to survive and find their new places in a changing world. Ash draws upon an extensive array of secondary sources of diaries of memoirs allowing him to follow these specific individuals. Ash separated this book with the four changing seasons in order to cover the changing lives of these four individuals. Throughout the entirety of 1865 these four individuals …show more content…
It gives insight to many underutilized and studied elements that happened following the war. The delay of emancipation in certain areas of the south, the migration of blacks and whites out of radical areas in both the north and south, the reassessment of communal ties in the face of mass destruction, and a growing spiritual awakening of Southerners questioned by the travesties brought about by the war, all of these aspects come to light in some form in the lives of the four southerners Ash has chosen to focus on. As is exceedingly successful in balancing the amount of information he provides and his understanding of it with the description of these “ordinary”
11/18/2016
The year 1865 could be described as one of the most tumultuous periods in American history. It was the inevitable fallout following the civil war and represented an uncertain future for many southerners who now had to rebuild their lives after losing the war. The book A Year in the South by Stephen Ash, describes the exceedingly different lives of Louis Hughes a slave determined to obtain freedom, Samuel Agnew a man of God coming to grasp with his spiritual and worldly troubles, Cornelia McDonald a widow battling despair and poverty brought on by the war, and John Robertson a former Confederate soldier seeking to separate himself from the remanence of the war, all of whom struggled throughout this year to survive and find their new places in a changing world. Ash draws upon an extensive array of secondary sources of diaries of memoirs allowing him to follow these specific individuals. Ash separated this book with the four changing seasons in order to cover the changing lives of these four individuals. Throughout the entirety of 1865 these four individuals …show more content…
It gives insight to many underutilized and studied elements that happened following the war. The delay of emancipation in certain areas of the south, the migration of blacks and whites out of radical areas in both the north and south, the reassessment of communal ties in the face of mass destruction, and a growing spiritual awakening of Southerners questioned by the travesties brought about by the war, all of these aspects come to light in some form in the lives of the four southerners Ash has chosen to focus on. As is exceedingly successful in balancing the amount of information he provides and his understanding of it with the description of these “ordinary”