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The Uncompromising Diary of Sallie McNeill, 1858-1867. Edited by Ginny McNeill Raska and Mary Lynne Gasaway Hill. Centennial Series of the Association of Former Students, Texas A&M University, No. 109. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2009. Pp. [xviii], 195. $32.50, ISBN 978-1-60344-087-5.)
Sarah "SaIUe" McNeUl of Brazoria County, Texas, composed a beautifully written, candid diary between 1858 and 1867 that now offers historians insightful information on a variety of topics. As an educated, single woman of me planter class, and as one living on the far western border of the antebellum South, McNeill wrote from an intriguing perspective. Unlike many diarists of the period, McNeill intended no public authence for her journal. Her writing blended nineteenth-century romanticism and spiritual concerns with pragmatic realism,...