“The South was in its Glory”

Southern Ladies Remember Plantation Life

Abstract

Southern Ladies were protagonists of the plantation South, and many of them were able to survive the defeat and the destructions of the Civil War, transforming themselves from "Ladies on the Pedestal" into social activists and reformers. While being denied even to speak in public, many prominent daughters of the plantation society were able to crusade for the bettennent of their society and for their own rights. Paradoxically, even when they became instrumental in the enactment of laws on some crucial issues such as prison reform, education, suffrage, prohibition, they remainded faithful to the mystique of the Lost Cause and supporters of segregation. They worshipped the memories of the Old South and contributed to the creation of the plantation South mythology, remembering in their Memoirs, with nostalgia and devotion, the ante-bellum South.