Cobb's Ordeal: The Diaries of a Virginia Farmer, 1842-1872Daniel W. Cobb, a farmer and small slaveholder from Virginia's rural tidewater, was unhappily married, resentful of his prosperous in-laws, and terribly lonely. His closest friend was the diary he kept for more than thirty momentous years in American history, from 1842 until his death at age sixty-one in 1872. The devout, plainspoken Cobb wrote in a conversational style, candidly recording his innermost thoughts. His diary's intimate account of a troubled marriage provides a painfully frank chronicle of incompatibility. The diary also illuminates the momentous impact of the Civil War and emancipation. Offering many insights into the oral culture from which he sprang, Cobb's Ordeal reveals the great differences that separate his world from our own. |
Contents
Part One A Virginia Farmer 1 Foundations and Faith | 3 |
Marriage and Personality | 22 |
Society | 43 |
Farming | 64 |
Slavery | 84 |
Part Two An Antebellum Year | 95 |
Winter | 97 |
Spring | 112 |
Autumn | 154 |
Part Three The Confederate Years | 177 |
I fear a Bloody war will Come up on us | 179 |
My dreams is not plesant | 209 |
The big desiding fight I think is on hand | 221 |
This war is on a pivet | 237 |
What a bloody cruel war this is | 260 |
Daniel W Cobbs Family and Kin | 331 |
Common terms and phrases
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