Miss Ravenel’s Conversion from Secession to Loyalty by John William De Forest
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I encountered this book while doing research on a project, and thought it would interesting to read this kind of conversion narrative, a woman from the south who goes north for a time in the era of the civil war, and who finds a northern man who eventually converts her to the cause of the Union. This was the description of the book and what led me to it was my curiosity as to how the author would manage the conversion. My hopes were not great but were dashed nevertheless. When the young woman, Lillie Ravenel, meets and marries her union officer, it is simply the marriage that brings about the change in her beliefs. She returns to New Orleans only to find herself shunned by her old circle of friends for having too many associations with the enemy. It is not her convictions which change but rather her alliances. The fact of slavery is not really part of the picture. It is rather a variation on the who-will-she-marry theme. Even the villainess is lackluster. The two suitors for her hand, a colonel and a captain, participate in the better parts of the book, which are the battle scenes, but action writing, no matter how fine, is lost in a novel, at least for me. But the most disappointing aspect is that a writer would see a woman’s life as being so thoroughly shaped by her husband – would see that and make nothing of it, I mean. It was an interesting moment of research that is indicative of how white Americans outside the south saw the Civil War in the years that followed its end.