In these vividly written letters we follow Tristrim Lowther Skinner of Edenton, North Carolina, from the age of thirteen in boarding schools in North Carolina and Philadelphia, through two years at the College of William and Mary where he studied under the brightest minds of the South, to his practical education in the “lean decade” of the 1840s when he learned the “mysterious art of farming.” A keen observer and natural-born story teller, Skinner’s letters record the dynamics of his dutiful relationship with his father as well as the family’s complex and wide-ranging connections to the larger world.

Guided by his father throughout – running the family farms, conducting business in the North and assuming state legislative responsibilities befitting his class – Skinner evolves into a well-versed, honorable, Southern planter. He ignores his father’s attempts to steer him in the direction of several wealthy marriage prospects and – at the age of twenty-eight – marries for love. These eloquent primary source documents provide an unusually detailed portrait of a future Confederate officer.