Sarah Morgan Dawson

Sarah Fowler Morgan Dawson (February 28, 1842 – May 5, 1909) was an American diarist and editorial writer. She wrote editorials for the Charleston News & Courier using the pen name Mr. Fowler. Her diary, A Confederate Girl's Diary, was published posthumously in six volumes by her son. It was republished in 1991 under the title Sarah Morgan: The Civil War Diary of a Southern Woman.

Early life Dawson was born Sarah Fowler Morgan on February 28, 1842 in New Orleans to Judge Thomas Gibbes Morgan and Sarah Hunt Fowler Morgan. Although she received less than a year of formal schooling, Dawson studied French language and English literature at home with her mother and sisters. Her brother, Henry Waller Fowler, was killed in a duel in the spring of 1861 and her father died several months later. The last pages of her diary recount the lose of her two brothers, the fall of the Confederacy, and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Later life and death In 1872, they moved to Columbia, South Carolina, where Dawson began writing editorials for the Charleston News & Courier under the pen name "Mr. Fowler". She was a staunch feminist and supporter of women's equality, expressing her views in both her editorials and in her diary. She also wrote about marriage and women's education.

On January 27, 1874, she married her newspaper editor, an Englishman and former Confederate officer named Francis Warrington Dawson. They had three children. Following her husband's death in 1889, she moved to Paris to live with her son, Warrington Dawson, and stayed there until her death on May 5, 1909.

Her six-volume diary was first published posthumously by her son in 1913 as A Confederate Girl's Diary. In 1991, her diary was republished as Sarah Morgan: The Civil War Diary of a Southern Woman. According to legend, her ghost haunts the old Louisiana state house in Baton Rouge.