The Women's Fight: The Civil War's Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation

by Thavolia Glymph

Overview

Historians of the Civil War often speak of "wars within a war"—the military fight, wartime struggles on the home front, and the political and moral battle to preserve the Union and end slavery. In this broadly conceived book, Thavolia Glymph provides a comprehensive new history of women's roles and lives in the Civil War—North and South, white and black, slave and free—showing how women were essentially and fully engaged in all three arenas. Glymph focuses on the ideas and ideologies that drove women's actions, allegiances, and politics. We encounter women as they stood their ground, moved into each other's territory, sought and found common ground, and fought for vastly different principles. Some women used all the tools and powers they could muster to prevent the radical transformations the war increasingly imposed, some fought with equal might for the same transformations, and other women fought simply to keep the war at bay as they waited for their husbands and sons to return home.

Glymph shows how the Civil War exposed as never before the nation's fault lines, not just along race and class lines but also along the ragged boundaries of gender. However, Glymph makes clear that women's experiences were not new to the mid-nineteenth century; rather, many of them drew on memories of previous conflicts, like the American Revolution and the War of 1812, to make sense of the Civil War's disorder and death.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469653631
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	02/03/2020
Series:	Littlefield History of the Civil War Era
Pages:	392
Sales rank:	1,094,149
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Thavolia Glymph is Peabody Family Distinguished Professor of History and Professor of Law at Duke University and author of Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

In the burgeoning literature on women and the Civil War, The Women's Fight is unique both because of the scope of its argument and the depth of its research. Glymph not only describes how the war affected women of all kinds but also examines their interactions with one another across boundaries of race, region, and class. The result is a fascinating and illuminating account that sheds important new light on America's greatest crisis."—Eric Foner, author of The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution

Thavolia Glymph has written the first history of the Civil War that brings to light the full panoply of women's thoughts and experiences. With eloquence, brilliance, and an unrelenting commitment to rendering the complexity of her gendered framework, she presents the war's meaning to slave and free, black and white, Unionist and Confederate, elite and poor, combatant and noncombatant, and citizen and stateless refugee—all women in the 'house divided against itself' and in the fight that tore the nation asunder."—Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Harvard University

After many years of scholars writing a new social history of the Civil War's home front, here is a magisterial work on women—all women, white and black, North and South. Glymph captures the complexity, the conflicting allegiances, the profound experience of loss and sorrow, the political behavior of ordinary and unusual women who fought in their own ways for their 'domestic sanctuaries,' for freedom itself, to save lives and protect homes, and for the fate of two nations. Rooted in a lifetime of profound research, Glymph writes with passion about real women undergoing an epic transformation."—David W. Blight, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom

Remarkably expansive and deeply penetrating, The Women's Fight reorients our understanding of the Civil War. From battlefield to home front, from household to refugee encampment, Glymph shows us, with deftness and originality, the complex and contradictory social experiences that only the revolution of emancipation could produce and that only the gendered perspective she offers can provide. Black and white, rich and poor, Southerners and Northerners together compose this kaleidoscopically stunning account. A brilliant and beautifully rendered work of history."—Steven Hahn, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Nation Under Our Feet

In prose that is both lyrical and riveting, Glymph, with her usual keen eye for issues of race, class, and section, breaks new ground in this story of how women met, understood, and responded to the exigencies of the Civil War."—R. J. M. Blackett, author of Making Freedom: The Underground Railroad and the Politics of Slavery

This book offers brilliant insights, interpretations, and correctives, adding sophistication to our understanding of women, gender, and the Civil War."—Elizabeth R. Varon, author of Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War

Glymph helps us draw together and make sense of a multitude of female experiences in wartime. By putting the African American experience at the center of her book, she also shifts our perspective on what it means to think about 'the women's Civil War.'"—Nina Silber, author of This War Ain't Over: Fighting the Civil War in New Deal America

Editorial Reviews

01/01/2020

Glymph (history and law, Duke Univ.; Out of the House of Bondage) sets out to prove two things with this latest book. First, the United States during the Civil War was as divided along gender lines as it was along geographic, political, socioeconomic, and racial lines. Second, rather than viewing the American Civil War as the story of how northern white men fought to end slavery, we should view the war as the story of how enslaved blacks wrestled for their own freedom. While other books have detailed how black men fought for their freedom, Glymph focuses on the important role played by enslaved black women in order to achieve freedom. Glymph also examines the experiences of white women of all socioeconomic classes from both North and South, who were divided along political lines and experienced loss during the war. Glymph, however, makes the case that what united them was their racism and disdain for those enslaved. VERDICT By telling the important, yet often-overlooked story of how enslaved women fought for their rights, and how white women often upheld the status quo, Glymph has written a refreshing, much-needed account of Civil War historiography.—Michael Farrell, Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando, FL

Library Journal

By telling the important, yet often-overlooked story of how enslaved women fought for their rights, and how white women often upheld the status quo, Glymph has written a much-needed account of Civil War historiography."—Library Journal

Powerful. . . . The Women's Fight is a book that compels us to reckon not only with the wartime experience of women but the possibilities that can come from patient historical research. In both respects, Glymph succeeds brilliantly."—American Nineteenth Century History

Glymph's sweeping assessment employs intersectional methods to the study of women in the Civil War while simultaneously problematizing key assumptions in the field. The result is a bold reassessment of the field with the political inventiveness of women, North and South, planted firmly at its center. . . .The Women's Fight has enormous implications for the future direction of Civil War historiography."Journal of African American History

Broadly considered, this publication deepens the scholarship illustrating the depth of military policy on women, from auxiliary roles to all areas of service today."—CHOICE

Glymph creates a new narrative about women in the war—across race, class, and regional boundaries—by challenging the battlefield/home front divide. . . . This book is a vital contribution to the scholarship on the Civil War because it does not merely illuminate the experiences of diverse groups of women; it also uses that evidence to transform our understanding of the Civil War (and perhaps war) itself."—Annals of Iowa

Glymph adds to the important new work being conducted on how the war influenced many different groups of refugees and the specific issues they faced. Throughout the volume, she illuminates neglected narratives and provides suggestions on possible subjects for future studies about the lives of women during the era."—H-Net Reviews

Glymph's study complicates and adds nuance to our picture of women's wartime struggles. The obstacles they faced were as multifaceted and individual as their personalities. Glymph has surpassed previous historians in bringing the individual experiences, contributions, and views of her female subjects, elite and poor, black and white, Northern and Southern, to light."—North Carolina Historical Review

A meticulously researched study . . . [that] complicates the assumptions we bring to the study of women in the American Civil War."—English Historical Review

A great strength of Glymph's account is her comparisons across class, racial, and regional lines . . . a powerful interpretation backed by a superb understanding of the sources and the literature."—New England Quarterly

From the Publisher