The first diary, with numbered pages, covers the period from August 1, 1862 to November 19, 1863, when the Army of Northern Virginia, under Robert E. Lee, achieved some of its most notable victories. She began it just after the Army of the Potomac, under George B. McClellan, had been withdrawn from the Peninsula. She reflects on Confederate victories at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, and notes there had been a battle at Gettysburg, “but no official report, only Yankee news.” She writes glowingly of Stonewall Jackson, and laments his death just after Chancellorsville (creating a black border around her entry). In this first part of her diary, she affirms her faith in the Confederacy’s military leaders.

Starting with a November 14, 1863 entry, the second book in her diary covers the period when Ulysses S. Grant had taken command of all Union armies, and launched the Overland Campaign (May and June 1864). She notes the fighting that took place (known now as The Wilderness and Spotsylvania Courthouse) and comments about the forces eventually opposing each near Petersburg. She mourns, as she did for Jackson, the death of J.E.B. Stuart (again creating a black border around her entry). She mentions, in a March 1865 entry, during the Confederacy’s last days, the “negro volunteers” who were being proposed to fill Confederate ranks.

There is a significant gap in her diary, being the days after March 26, 1865 and before May 9, 1865. This is the period that spans the evacuation and fall of Richmond, Lincoln’s visit to Richmond, Lee’s surrender at Appomattox and Lincoln’s assassination. Later, after resuming her diary, she comments upon two Proclamations that President Johnson issued as Lincoln’s successor, one calling for a “Day of Fasting, Humiliation, and Mourning for the Death of President Lincoln” and the other for “Thanksgiving Day, 1865.”

The second diary notes the cost of items, states her intention to keep an account “of every cent” she spent, and begins (apparently, on the back pages of the book) to keep such an account. She also, more and more, looks back on the deaths of many of her friends and acquaintances, and writes often of her loneliness. In many places, despite the painful loss of a world she knew, she declares her faith in an all-knowing Providence, and warns herself - as the Bible does - against “murmuring.”

Her last entry is November 5, 1871, which ends a nearly two year gap in her diary.

Note: In its original form, the second diary was intended as an “Index Rerum,” an alphabetized manual for the preservation of “anything of interest.” Its pages were blank, but a person could note down a subject or an idea, and its source. There are no sequentially numbered pages, only pages marked in the corners with the letters of the alphabet (in capitals) and, in page centers, with the first five vowels. Each letter has ten pages. Most of the pages are still held in place by the binding, but there are some loose pages. This fourth edition (1839) was authored by the Rev. John Todd, pastor of the Edwards Church, Northampton [Massachusetts].