Jan Nichols Batts

It was seed time, the decade that formed the character of those who lived during the War Between the States.

Twenty-dollar Gold Pieces

Lying in the Dust

 

Vacant chair on veranda

 

Sometimes on cold winter nights, Mama could be persuaded to tell the little ones there was fine Southern blood flowing in their veins. She would open the trunk in the corner and unpack her treasures: a tiny nosegay of dried flowers, a piece of lace that once belonged to some distant maiden aunt who died years before, a delicate collar that retained its beauty but no longer was fashionable.

Mama would set all those aside and take out what the little ones thought was the most valuable of all, the ambrotype of their grandfather, taken on his way to defend the South against Northern aggression. … More

 

 

 

One Reason They Didn’t Smile

March 22, 2016

Civil War diarist Mary Chesnut summed up the law thus: “There is no slave, after all, like a wife.” To write accurate historical fiction, the female characters must live with the ugly truth that women had virtually no rights in the antebellum South. Whatever romanticized historical fiction may say, Rhett Butler can’t compare with knowing “all men are created equal” means men and women have equal protection under the law. … More One Reason They Didn’t Smile

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