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(More customer reviews)_Mary's World_ traces the life story of Mary Motte Alston Pringle, a prominent South Carolinian woman, from her youth in the early 1800s to her passing at an advanced age. Much of the story is drawn from her own writings, which are voluminous and articulate, though Côté steers clear of the trap of overquoting and invests the effort to interpret and present--just as an historian should.
Most authors would be delighted to succeed in one significant way with a book--Côté succeeds in many with _Mary's_. It is dispassionate history, navigating the shoals of one of the most partisan events in US history (the Civil War) without demonizing or deifying either side. It is 'herstory', if you will, giving us a view of times past from the standpoint of a courageous woman who went from genteel wealth to genteel poverty. It is also African American history: the blacks who played integral roles in Mary's world have names, faces and attitudes, which naturally changed with society. It asks and answers deeper questions about the protagonists' motivations, ideas, beliefs and viewpoints. It makes abundantly clear that Reconstruction was an equal opportunity failure, destroying rather than redistributing wealth. Côté's style is uncluttered, perceptive and engaging. It plays no favourites and panders to no one. The notes often explain contemporary slang and add value to the main text; the index is very helpful; the bibliography is impressive.
Strongly recommended as 19th-century US history, Southern history, Civil War history, women's history and/or black history. It would be of particular value for the high school or college student of US history writing an essay or looking for inspiration for one, and I look forward to more work of this calibre from the author.
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Mary's World: Love, War, and Family Ties in Nineteenth-century CharlestonBorn to affluence and opportunity in the South's GoldenAge, Mary Motte Alston Pringle (1803-1884) represented the epitome ofSouthern white womanhood.Her husband was a wealthy rice planter whoowned four plantations and 337 slaves.Her thirteen children includedtwo Harvard scholars, seven world travelers, a U.S. Navy war hero, sixConfederate soldiers, one possible Union collaborator, a Confederatefirebrand trapped in the North, an expatriate bon vivant in France,and two California pioneers.Mary's World illuminates inlavish detail the world and psyche of this wealthy, well-educated,well-intentioned woman and her family from the antebellum South.During the Civil War, Mary and her husband, William, stood helpless astwo sons were killed, another was driven insane, their slaves werefreed, and the world as they knew it was swept away by a hurricane ofsocial change. In her own words, Mary tells us about the joys,sorrows, frustrations, and terrors she and her family faced innineteenth-century Charleston.This intimate, visceral biography wasdrawn directly from over 2,500 pages of Mary's handwritten letters,journals and diaries, none of which, she could have imagined, wouldever be read by strangers.Therein lies their power.Readers also learn about the vastly different lifestyles, food,clothing, and experiences of their slaves.Mary's World also paysspecial attention to Cretia Stewart, Mary's favorite servant,Cretia's husband, Scipio, and their free descendants, some of whomworked for Mary's grandchildren well into the twentieth century.How Mary, William, their children, and slaves lived before the CivilWar, clung desperately to life in the eye of the maelstrom, and coped– or failed to cope -- with its bewildering aftermath is the storyof this book.The letters and images they left behind offer pricelessinsights into the anguished roots of Southern social history.
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