Civil War Quilt Block Twelve—Louisiana

Now to catch up with a bunch of the Civil War Quilt-a-long blocks, from Barbara Brackman's Civil War Quilts blog. The next one is the twelfth, called Louisiana, and Brackman returns to the story of Sarah Morgan, whom she had written about in block three, Seven Sisters. And at the time, reading about young Sarah, I thought, What a little snot.

But then I felt bad, because after all I was judging her on only a little bit of information. So I went and started to read her diary, which Brackman links to.

Not only did I not change my mind about Morgan, I found my instincts very much confirmed.

Now, I know, pretty much everyone is an idiot at age nineteen, and even more so if there's also a bunch of privilege thrown in (like being a rich white upper class girl in the slave-owning South of the United States). And it's true, I didn't read all the way to the end; but I found her diary just so tedious. I kept waiting for her to get a clue, to learn some empathy, but so far (and again, I read it on Google books, so have no idea how near the end I was!) I see no evidence that she has—she's still doing stupid reckless things that put herself in danger and she hasn't seemed to cotton on to the idea that the slaves are actually, you know, human and stuff. I do know that towards the end of the war her two brothers would be killed, so maybe that will serve to open her soul up a little, I don't know. And I suppose I really ought to go read all of it before I judge. I just don't know if I have the patience for it.

Because, seriously, What a little snot.

At any rate I liked this block; I'm a sucker for pinwheel variations I guess. They have such nice feel of movement to them.

Here's mine: