Brokenburn: The Journal of Kate Stone, 1861-1868

Introduction

Introduction The Journal of Kate Stone vividly records the Civil War experiences of a well-educated, sensitive, patriotic Southern girl who was twenty years old when the war began and who was living with her widowed mother, five brothers, and a young sister at Brokenburn, a large cotton plantation in northeast Louisiana, about thirty miles northwest of Vicksburg , Mississippi. Located in what is now Madison Parish in the floodplain of the Mississippi, Brokenburn lay in the fertile, flat land created by centuries of overflow. Opened to settlement in 1839, the rich land had attracted many planters from Mississippi and the eastern cotton states. The Mississippi and the many navigable bayous provided landings for steamboats to bring in supplies and haul away the cotton. Throughout the 1840's and 1850's plantations were opened each year by clearing away the dense forest. Since more cotton meant more slaves, great numbers were brought in from the east and from the slave market in New Orleans, where prune field hands brought $800 to $1,200, and of the 11,156 people in Madison Parish by 1859, 9,863 were slaves— nine Negroes to every white person. Huge fortunes were made by some planters in a few years; mansions were built and filled with imported furnishings; and many planters made the European grand tour. Like other planters in the area, Kate's mother, thirtyseven -year-old Amanda Stone, reckoned her large fortune in land, cotton, and slaves. She owned 1,260 acres of the productive black soil and about 150slaves. She provided a tutor for her children and planned a European tour for 1862. Against this typical antebellum background the first part of Kate Stone's story takes place. Aware that she was living in a momentous time, Kate began her Journal in May, 1861, when many young men from northeast Louisiana, anxious to get in the fight before it was over, were rushing to join xvii xviii JOHN Q. ANDERSON Mississippi companies in Vicksburg, as did Kate's Uncle Bo and her brother William. With a vivid imagination filled with the romances of Sir Walter Scott, "The Prince of Novelists," Kate shared the widespread belief of Southerners that the war would be an outing for dashing young officers in splendid uniforms, inspired to deeds of valor by patriotic maidens. In the following months, she recorded the attitude of the civilians at home in Madison and Carroll parishes, who, anxious as they were for the safety of their soldiers, nevertheless felt that the battles at insignificant towns in Virginia, Tennessee, and Missouri were far away. Even the military reverses of the first year, which Kate avidly followed in the newspapers, did not cool her ardor or convince her that Southern arms could not triumph in " our just Cause," though she had to admit that the war might well last longer than she had anticipated. Kate's optimism turned to fierce hatred of the enemywhen the war moved close to northeast Louisiana in 1862. She reported the fall of the river forts in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, which left the northern approach to Vicksburg open, and she loathed the sight of the Federal gunboats that appeared in the Mississippi only a few miles from Brokenburn in 1862. At the same time, the southern approach to Vicksburg via the river was opened by the fall of the forts at the mouth of the Mississippi and by the surrender of New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Natchez in quick succession, much to Kate's despair. " Fair Louisiana," shecried, " with her fertile fields of cane and cotton, her many bayous and dark old forests, lies powerless at the feet of the enemy." With the enemy at the door and with the enlisting of her teen-age brothers, Coleman and Walter, Kate's anger struck out on the one hand at the " fireside braves," as she called those who had not volunteered, and on the other at the detested Yankee gunboats which had cut off letters from her soldier brothers and news of the outside world. She was angry, too, at the waste of war when her mother, along with other planters, set fire to their cotton at the request of General Beauregard. Kate saw $20,000worth ofcotton destroyed at Brokenburn. Moreover, plagued by shortages of staples, INTRODUCTION xix clothing, medicines, and reading matter (a serious shortage for Kate), she listened anxiously to the cannonading at Vicksburg as...