In Their Own Words
June 01, 1865
Refusal to Join Fast
Union soldiers stationed in Washington, Georgia observed a day of fasting on June 1 in memory of the recently assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. Eliza Frances Andrews was unimpressed, as she recorded in her journal:
“June 1. Thursday. I dressed up in my best, intending to celebrate the Yankee fast by going out to pay some calls, but I had so many visitors at home that I did not get out till late in the afternoon. I am sorry enough that Lincoln was assassinated, Heaven knows, but this public fast is a political scheme gotten up to throw reproach on the South, and I wouldn’t keep it if I were ten times as sorry as I am… .”
Source: Eliza Frances Andrews, The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 1864-1865 (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1908), pp. 279-280.
