This diary and notebook was kept by Mrs. C[atherine] V[irginia] Baxley of Baltimore, Maryland after her arrest as a blockade runner for the Confederacy and during her confinement at the Old Capital Prison, Washington, D.C. from February 24-July 2,...
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This diary and notebook was kept by Mrs. C[atherine] V[irginia] Baxley of Baltimore, Maryland after her arrest as a blockade runner for the Confederacy and during her confinement at the Old Capital Prison, Washington, D.C. from February 24-July 2, 1865. It is written in a copy of Alfred Tennyson's Enoch Arden, (Boston, 1865) which was presented to her by Colonel N[ewton] P. Colby on February 14, 1865. Attached is a statement of Ellie E. Clark, a cousin of Mrs. Baxley, vouching for the authenticity of the record Entries include a list of women prisoners at the Old Capital Prison, including Mrs. Surratt and her daughter, and the causes for which they were arrested. Baxley also tells of the death of her own son, a Confederate soldier, in the same prison. The diary provides a valuable psychological record of the effects of confinement, and of war psychosis in the South. Baxley had been previously arrested as a spy, on December 30, 1861, and was one of the first women confined in the Old Capital Prison
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