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In 1860 Catherine Ann Devereux Edmondston and her husband, Patrick Muir Edmondston, lived in Halifax County on Looking Glass plantation and operated a smaller plantation, Hascosea, nearby. The Edmondstons owned eighty-eight slaves. Their total estate comprised 1,894 acres and had a value of $19,600. Both Catherine and Patrick were staunch secessionists. Catherine filled her diary, which she began keeping consistently in 1860 at the age of thirty-six, with praise for the Southern cause and Southerners in general, as well as scathing references to the "Yankees," whom she despised. The March 4, 1861, entry clearly expressed her opinion of the new Republican president: "Today was inaugurated that wretch Abraham Lincoln President of the US. We are told not to speak evil of Dignities, but it is hard to realize he is a Dignity. Ah! would that Jefferson Davis was our President. He is a man to whom a gentleman could look at without mortification as cheif of his nation."
Catherine Edmondston noted on January 23, 1863, that she felt "truly blessed" because shortages brought on by the war had affected life at Looking Glass plantation very little, except for the necessity of adding blackberry leaves to the stock of tea, and "the cessation of all desserts but baked Apples." But by the end of the year, her situation had worsened, although the self-sufficiency of the plantation alleviated conditions somewhat. On December 3, 1863, she wrote: "Very busy dying warp for Mr E's & my own clothes. So we have come to it & are to wear our own homespun! In fact I find that most articles of prime neccessity except salt, iron, & paper can be produced at home by us. This ink, for instance, is of my own manufacture & I do not see why it is not as good as the 'boughten' article." Edmondston acknowledged the rapidly deteriorating economic situation in an entry ten days later. She wrote that an acquaintance had paid $750 for a barrel of sugar in Virginia and that her own husband had spent $60 to buy her a pair of French boots, adding, "I consoled myself for the seeming extravagance by resolving to send 12 or 14 lbs of butter to Petersburg where it is from 4 to 5 [dollars] per lb."
Catherine Edmondston never reconciled her ardent devotion to the Confederacy with the South's defeat and Reconstruction. On July 28, 1865, she vented her frustrations in her diary, writing: "Since Monday a new element of bitterness has been infused into our daily lives. On that day Father and Mr Edmondston were forced in order to protect themselves against Yankee & negro insolence & to preserve the remnant of our property, to go to Halifax & to take the hated oath of Allegiance to that loathed Yankee Government!" The war greatly decreased the Edmondstons' financial status. Patrick died suddenly in 1871, and his death devastated Catherine. She wrote to her nephew on September 10, 1871, "I am so weak in mind-almost as powerless as a little child! I am utterly incapable of any extended process of thought for every power & energy of my intellectual being seems numbed." In 1872 Edmondston rallied herself and anonymously published a pamphlet entitled The Morte D'Arthur: Its Influence on the Spirit and Manners of the Nineteenth Century. Her writing was filled with bitterness against the "barbaric" North and praise for the "chivalry and good manners" of the men who had served in the Confederate army. Catherine Edmondston died at age fifty-one on January 3, 1875, in Raleigh.
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