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"The papers presented here are an unusual contribution to the literature of the Old South and of the Civil War. The journal of Benjamin Fleet is in itself extraordinary. A little over thirteen years old when he began the journal a few months before the war, Benny writes with a maturity surprising in a boy so young, but, more important still, he sees the world around him with the clear-sighted directness of youth. The letters of Fred, Benny's older brother, who writes from the Confederate army, and those of the parents complete the collection. There have been many published diaries and memoirs from the Civil War period in the South, but here for the first time are brought together the impressions of a whole family, the varying points of view of youth and age, soldier and civilian. Here is a lively and realistic picture of the impact of war upon life on a southern plantation -- the central economic entity and cultural symbol of the civilization which grew in the South before the war and which the war brought to an abrupt end"--Introduction.