An insightful prelude to the well-known wartime diaries of Mary Boykin Chesnut and Emma Holmes The diary Keziah Brevard documents one plantation mistress's reflections on the momentous events that shook the South during the months leading up to the Civil War: the election of Abraham Lincoln, South Carolina's secession convention, and the attack on Fort Sumter. A childless middle-aged widow, Brevard lived nine miles from Columbia, South...