Women and the American Civil War: North-South Counterpoints

by Judith Giesberg (Editor), Randall M. Miller (Editor)

Overview

The scholarship on women’s experiences in the U.S. Civil War is rich and deep, but much of it remains regionally specific or subsumed in more general treatments of Northern and Southern peoples during the war. In a series of eight paired essays, scholars examine women’s comparable experiences across the regions, focusing particularly on women’s politics, wartime mobilization, emancipation, wartime relief, women and families, religion, reconstruction, and Civil War memory. In each pairing, historians analyze women’s lives, interests, and engagement in public issues and private concerns and think critically about what stories and questions still need attention. Among their questions are:

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781631013096
Publisher:	Kent State University Press
Publication date:	07/17/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Judith Giesberg is professor of history at Villanova University and the editor of the Journal of the Civil War Era. She is the author of five books, including “Army at Home”: Women and the Civil War on the Northern Home Front, Key- stone State in Crisis: Pennsylvania in the Civil War, Emilie Davis’s Civil War: The Diaries of a Free Black Woman in Philadelphia, 1863–1865, and Sex and the Civil War: Soldiers, Pornography, and the Making of American Morality.

Randall M. Miller is the William Dirk Warren ’50 Sesquicentennial Chair and professor of history at Saint Joseph’s University and the author or editor of more than 25 books on a variety of subjects, including the Civil War era. Among his books are Religion and the American Civil War, coedited with Harry S. Stout and Charles Reagan Wilson, and The Northern Home Front during the Civil War, coauthored with Paul A. Cimbala.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments ix

Introduction xi

Part 1 Politics

Southern Women and Politics in the Civil War Era Elizabeth R. Varan 3

"All Ladies Have Politics": Women, Morality, and Politics in the North Stacey M. Robertson 22

Part 2 Wartime Mobilization

"With Hearts Nerved by the Necessity for Prompt Action": Southern Women, Mobilization, and the Wartime State Lisa Tendrich Frank 41

Northern Women, the State, and Wartime Mobilization Jessica Ziparo 62

Part 3 Emancipation

Southern Women and Emancipation during the Civil War Rebecca Capobianco 81

Northern Women and Emancipation Chandra Manning 102

Part 4 Wartime Relief

Needles as Weapons: Southern Women and Civil War Relief Libra Hilde 125

Real Women and Mythical Womanhood: War Relief at the Northern Home Front Jeanie Attie 151

Part 5 Women and Families

Women and Families on the Southern Home Front Jacqueline Glass Campbell 171

Women and the Family at Home in the North Nicole Etcheson 190

Part 6 Religion

"Hasten the Day": Slavery's Apocalypse among Enslaved Women and Planter Women in the Civil War South W. Scott Poole 215

"I Can Read His Righteous Sentence": Female Christian Abolitionists and the Millennium Timothy Wesley 232

Part 7 Reconstruction

"In Times of Change and Trouble Like These": Commonalities among Southern Women during Reconstruction Elizabeth Parish Smith 261

Women and Reconstruction in the North Faye Dudden 280

Part 8 Civil War Memory

Southern Memories and Reconstructions: The Shifting Grounds and Contested Places of Women's Civil War Memorial Work Micki McElya 303

Faithful Helpmates and Fervent Activists: Northern Women and Civil War Memory Wendy Hamand Venet 323

Contributors 340

Index 343

Editorial Reviews

"The overall importance of this collection lies in its effort to connect the experiences of women in Civil War America across the sectional divide.... Thee book should be of interest to scholars and graduate students working on women in the Civil War era." — The Annals of Iowa

From the Publisher