Unique because of its Southern female author, A Girl's Life in Virginia Before the War offers a heretofore rare glimpse into the genteel lives of upper-class antebellum girls and women. Recall that Hollywood movies and public school history textbooks are at the very least not thorough and often offer erroneous information particularly about this War. Letitia M. Burwell was a plantation and slave owner's daughter and, even if the truth of her era is "Gone With the Wind," she was no "Scarlet" and her inherited family land and antique home was no Tara.
       This first-person account chronicles the life of its author, who lived on a Virginia plantation, and is the author's attempt to set the record straight, so to speak. Even by its original 1895 publication date, only 30 years post-Appomattox Courthouse, the mythology surrounding the War and its causes already flourished. Miss Burwell's life unfolds in the pages of this 2003 reprint, and her writing style draws her reader back to a slower pace of life and a life congealed mostly within the perimeter of the home acreage.
       Though Burwell's references to Negroes as an "inferior race" will likely raise eyebrows, if not tempers, A Girl's Life in Virginia Before the War deserves a thorough read regardless of the reader's race. Page after page describes the respect given to the "servants," for her family never called the former Africans "slaves." Her portrait of slavery and of the attendant living conditions differs greatly from the usual fare:

       Each cabin had as much pine furniture as the occupants desired, pine and oak being abundant, and carpenters always at work for the comfort of the plantation.
       Bread, meat, milk, vegetables, fruit, and fuel were as plentiful as water in the springs near the cabin doors.
       Among the negroes – one hundred – on our plantation, many had been taught different trades; and there were blacksmiths, carpenters, masons, millers, shoemakers, weavers, spinners, all working for themselves. No article of their handicraft ever being sold from the place, their industry resulted in nothing beyond feeding and clothing themselves....
       The negroes made pocket-money by selling their own vegetables, poultry, eggs, etc., – produced at the master's expense, of course. I often saw my mother take out her purse and pay them liberally for fowls, eggs, melons, sweet potatoes, brooms, shuck mats, and split baskets. The men made small crops of tobacco or potatoes for themselves on any piece of ground they chose to select (pages 2, 6-7).

       History-haters would have modern Americans believe that slaves were kept ignorant and illiterate so they wouldn't revolt. Burwell, however, in her primary source offering, describes the living conditions differently: "Many could read, and in almost every cabin was a Bible. In one was a prayer-book, kept by one of the men, a preacher, from which he read the marriage ceremony at the weddings. This man opened a night school – charging twenty-five cents a week – hoping to create some literary thirst in the rising generation, whose members, however, preferred their nightly frolics to the school, so it had few patrons" (page 3).
       Burwell remembered calling male servants "Uncle" and female servants "Aunt" as terms of respect for the older Negroes. She also recounted how it was considered a "breach of politeness" for visitors to forget to give gifts to the household Negroes. There is a funny story about a cranky sort of older woman who was given her freedom several times, but always came back to the Burwell's plantation – and was taken back and given the clothing, food, shelter, and medical care that the Burwell family gave to all of their servants. The author refers to the Negroes as "our people" and relates how the servants called the master and his family "our white people."
       Negro dialect wafts in and out of the pages, helping to create the picture of this slower time when the plantation was its own world. Individual slaves come to life with Burwell's pen, as does the truth of how they lived in that era. Not every master may have cared for their slaves as did the Burwells, though for them to harm "property" that could cost thousands of 1860 dollars seems illogical. "Instances of harsh or cruel treatment were rare," Burwell wrote. "I never heard of more than two or three individuals who were 'hard' or unkind to their negroes, and these were ostracized from respectable society, their very names bringing reproach and blight upon their descendants" (page 29).
       Burwell writes of the Negroes as people to care for, and she believed that people who owned no servants were fortunate. She recounted memories of her mother and grandmother sitting up nights with sick servants, and how those two ladies spent much time in discussing the wants and needs of the Negroes "entrusted" to them. The book paints a familial picture of the slaves and their owners, calling the servants "valuable friend(s)."
       Burwell spends little time on the War; her mission is to explain life before "the war of 1861" erupted. After hearing some Northern view of Southern life, she remarked, "How little those people know about us!" (page 94) Later, she indicates that secession was prudent since "it's better to separate than to quarrel" (page 179). The author plainly saw the Yankees as her "enemy" but her tenor isn't generally caustic:

       Band after band of brave-hearted, bright-faced youths from Southern plantation homes came to bleed and die on Virginia soil; and for four long years old Virginia was one great camping-ground, hospital, and battlefield.... The hearts of the women and children were sad and care-worn. But God, to whom we prayed, protected us in our plantation homes, where no white men or even boys remained, all having gone into the army. Only the negro slaves stayed with us, and these were encouraged by our enemies to rise and slay us.... Although advised to burn our property and incited by the enemy to destroy their former owners, these negro slaves remained faithful, manifesting kindness, and in many instances protecting the white families and plantations during their masters' absence (page 181).

       Burwell is a name-dropper, and I happened upon a reference to what may have been my own Virginia ancestor, the Deggs' family having arrived there in 1643. The Burwell family visited widely and, when at home, often entertained. The author has fond recollections of Robert E. Lee and his wife, and passes along what might now be considered as antique morsels of gossip. The reader should resist the urge to race past these tidbits; they form part of the weave of her credibility as a primary source. Sixteen pen-and-ink illustrations aid her in the endeavor.
       Burwell ends her tale with an account of "modern" women of the 1890s and how shocking it was for them to work and travel unprotected by their menfolk. Today's women may find her shock naïve and ignorant, but I found it wistful as she harkened to her younger days and the propriety with which she was raised. Burwell also offers a brief and not-really bitter account of post-Reconstruction Negroes who, she observed, had less materially with freedom than they had had in slavery.
       This book is a good read for advanced middle school readers through adults who are searching for anecdotal primary source material on antebellum plantation life and who are not frightened by the thought of truth which will be antagonistic to popular Yankee-ized misconceptions.

- reviewed by Deborah Deggs Cariker