To what extent might one draw historical facts from her diary by making allowances for her prejudiced point of view?

Alice Williamson (Links to an external site.) was a teenager in Tennessee during the Civil War. She kept a 36-page diary from February to September 1864. For this assignment, you will read an excerpt of her diary and answer the questions below. As you read the diary and address these questions, think about what we went over in the introductory lecture regarding how to read primary source documents.

https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/scriptorium/williamson/text.html

Alice refers to “E. A. Payne, Payne, Gen. P., Old Payne, Our king, Tempest, his lordship, old hurricane, Thunder Storm, and Old Marster.” They are all same person: Eleazar Arthur Paine (Links to an external site.)
When Alice refers to “rebels” she is referring to Confederates.

To what extent can we trust her account of the facts?
Which parts of her diary seem reliable, which parts unreliable?
To what extent might one draw historical facts from her diary by making allowances for her prejudiced point of view?
In what sense are her expressions of prejudice themselves of interest as historical facts?
If you could interview Alice Williamson, what questions would you ask? What other kinds of historical documents might you be able to examine to find answers to these questions?
What other kinds of documents could a historian consult to set the Williamson diary in a historical context?
What kind of history could be based on the Alice Williamson diary?
To what extent is the diary evidence of “what happened” and “what people thought” in 1864? To what extent is it only the record of one deeply prejudiced girl’s impressions?

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