Rebel (Civil War Period)

Chapter 1..

1st January 1861

It is my sixteenth birthday today, and I decided that since my days are often consisting of deedless emptiness, I would fill this by keeping a diary.

I still remember my opinion on writing a journal - It is an absolutely tawdry and senseless activity, simply something other to do than sitting in the salon and just staring outside the window at the quiet streets.

That was before things changed. The streets are not quiet anymore, far from it. And I do not write in this book now because I am bored, but because I feel that what's happening at the moment will be a change that might affect the country we live in. It seems right to me to keep record of these events - maybe it will be something I will be remembered by. For who knows how this mess will turn out to end, and whether I will then still have the chance to write...

Now let me begin.

My name is Georgiana Ellwood, daughter of General Richard Ellwood who is stationed here, near Barbourville, Kentucky. My parents are convinced patriots, and they have raised my siblings and me to love our home country and be loyal subjects. I have two sisters, Marianne, who is nineteen, and Susannah, who is fourteen. My older brother William is currently sent away, and my parents won't tell me where to, but I can guess - revolution and war is hanging heavy in the air. William also sends me letters regularly. It is he whom I have all my knowledge about this revolution from, since my parents would not tell me anything, seeing it as unfit for an American lady to bother about such matters.

I live a sheltered life, here in the villa on the countryside, overlooking the open fields, the peasants and slaves working under the heat of the sun. I often wished to join them, to ride over the fields, to smell the fresh air... As I said, however, I was living a sheltered life, and my adventurous drive was not well-liked by my dear parents. They had raised me, after all, to be married to a proper, well-bred officer and be a dutiful wife to him, not to strive for personal independence. I had learnt to agree to it as well as I could, but I could never abandon my dream of travelling around the world.

Every time I look at the birds flying in the blue, cloudless sky, I feel that longing for excitement. Even now that excitement is all around me, I am still shielded from it. But I know what is going on out there: The tension is heavy as lead in the air.

The talk about the seclusion of the Southern States is just the beginning.

My father, however, sees matters completely different, as is to be expected of him. This uprising is merely a phase that will be over soon, he said. The America we know will persist.

I shall stop here for now. It is unbelievably hot outside, and these corsets are taking the last bit of air from my lungs. I long for the night, as it brings cool relief...

I laid down the quill and rubbed my eyes. The light outside was fading, and the lanterns were not strong enough to compensate for the sun's bright beams.

How will this end? I asked myself as I closed my diary, stood up and walked over to my cabinet to lock it away, the key on a chain around my neck. The words I had just written I wanted nobody to see.

Diary, I thought with some contempt as I turned the key and pulled it out. To think that I had secretly laughed about those silly girls who wrote down their every admirer in one of these books. Now I was no better, only that love and courtship had no place on the pages of mine.

"Georgiana, darling! Dinner is ready!"

"I am coming, Mama." As I crossed my room to attend dinner, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror. Frowning at myself, I judged that Marianne was definitely the prettiest of us three girls. She had the blonde curls, the blue eyes, the rosy cheeks. Susannah, too, had inherited our parents' good looks, while I came strongly after my grandmother. Auburn-haired, pale-cheeked, green-eyed. At the parties my mother liked to host I was mostly the girl going under in the crowd, while my sisters stood out like sun rays on a rainy day. I did not begrudge them, for I knew that what I may lack in looks, I had in wit and intellect.