The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai
Edited and with an introduction by Dianne Ashton with Melissa R. Klapper (NYU Press)

More than 160 years ago, Emma Mordecai, an educated Jewish woman from a prosperous, slave-holding family in Richmond, Va., took quill to paper and described her daily life during the final year of the Civil War.

Following the death of her mother, Mordecai and her family rented out their Richmond home to the Confederate army. In her 50s and unmarried, she moved to a small farm owned by her Christian sister-in-law, Rosina, in Rosewood, just outside the city.

Her diary spans from April 1864 to May 1865 and is a rare and revealing personal testimony of an observant Jewish woman who lived in the heart of the Confederacy.

Indeed, Mordecai was a minority among a minority. Jews made up less than 1 percent of the South then, a total of some 25,000 Jews. But even among that community, she was a rarity—a religious single woman in a Jewish population where most intermarried or assimilated.

Dianne Ashton, professor emeritus of philosophy and world religion at Rowan University, had spent years researching and writing about Mordecai. However, she had not completed the manuscript before her death in 2022.

Enter Melissa Klapper, a history professor at Rowan and director of the school’s women and gender studies program. Klapper and Ashton met when Klapper was in graduate school. Ashton became first her mentor and later her friend and colleague. After Ashton’s death, Klapper felt compelled to complete and publish Ashton’s vital and fascinating work.

And it is a fascinating read. The diary, with its extensive, 80-page introduction detailing Southern Jewish life, will engage lay readers as well as scholars.

Mordecai wrote about her everyday comings and goings, from strolls through the countryside to updates on family and vivid descriptions of the broader context of wartime life. She visited wounded Confederate soldiers, endured food rationing and looked after others during fierce battles nearby. In one entry, she wrote about placing flowers she found on a walk in the woods in pots, then hearing “heavy firing in the direction of the city. The servants say they have heard it when at work in the field. The enemy seem to be making an attack on all sides. I still feel undismayed & pray God to enable us to endure…with fortitude.”

In her first entry, on Thursday, April 18, 1864, Mordecai wrote that she returned to Richmond, where she, accompanied by Rosina’s grown daughter, spent Passover with the family of another cousin. They were observant Jews and lived in walking distance of Beth Shalome synagogue.

Her relatives spanned both sides of the Civil War, but Mordecai, like almost all her siblings, supported slavery. While Jews today will find her defense of slavery in the diary distressing and inconsistent with core Jewish values and beliefs, Klapper cautioned that we must understand Mordecai’s views in the context of her times. “She’s a good example of the messiness of history,” Klapper said in an interview. “She is both a staunch defender of Judaism and also a slave owner who really believed in the Confederacy.”

After the war, Mordecai continued to live at Rosewood with family. She remained active in Richmond’s Jewish life, founding Beth Shalome’s Sunday school, where she served as its superintendent.

Her diary was preserved by her relatives, who donated the surviving pages to the University of North Carolina.

The Civil War is extensively documented, with scores of diaries written by women, men and soldiers. Yet Mordecai’s diary stands out, Klapper said, for its remarkable balance of daily life and broader reflections on the war. And notably, her vivid, honest writing reveals a deep commitment to her Jewish faith.

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Penny Schwartz is a journalist who writes about Jewish subjects and the arts for a variety of publications.