Women's War: Fighting and Surviving the American Civil War

by Stephanie McCurry Narrated by Teri Barrington

Overview

In this groundbreaking reconsideration of the Civil War, the award-winning author of Confederate Reckoning invites us to see America's bloodiest conflict not just as pitting brother against brother but as a woman's war.



When the war broke out, Union soldiers assumed Confederate women would be innocent noncombatants. Experience soon challenged this simplistic belief. Stephanie McCurry reveals the vital and sometimes confounding roles women played on and off the battlefield. We meet Clara Judd, a Confederate spy whose imprisonment for treason sparked heated controversy, defying the principle of civilian immunity and leading to lasting changes in the laws of war. Hundreds of thousands of enslaved women escaped across Union lines, upending emancipation policies that extended only to enslaved men. The Union's response was to classify fugitive black women as "soldiers' wives," regardless of whether they were married-offering them some protection but placing new obstacles on their path to freedom. In the war's aftermath, the Confederate grande dame Gertrude Thomas wrestled with her loss of status and of her former slaves. War, emancipation, and economic devastation affected her family intimately, and through her life McCurry helps us see how fundamental the changes of Reconstruction were.

Editorial Reviews

Washington Post

Readers expecting hoop-skirted ladies soothing fevered soldiers’ brows will not find them here…It explodes the fiction that men fight wars while women idle on the sidelines.

Wall Street Journal

Correcting histories that erase women’s share in wartime work, McCurry reminds us that ‘Women are never just witnesses to war.’

Times Literary Supplement

Identifies a durable commitment to patriarchy that outlasted slavery and sustained white supremacy through the Civil War and beyond…McCurry sets out to view the South’s ordeal in the Civil War ‘through women’s eyes,’ a perspective too often ignored in histories of warfare.

David W. Blight

With uncommon comparative sizzle and a deep grounding in gender, legal, and racial history, McCurry has written a stunning portrayal of a tragedy endured and survived by women. Horror and hardship in this case have inspirited beautiful writing. Women’s War gives the legions of Civil War era readers a unique, unsettling, and enriching understanding of the conflict. Women were not mere witnesses to war; McCurry is our witness to how they died and lived through this cataclysm.

New Yorker

Traces three narratives to argue that ‘there is no Civil War history without women in it.’ Women waged grassroots campaigns that informed the new concept of ‘Civilian as Enemy’—the trial of the Confederate spy Cara Judd altered martial law—and shaped the Union’s refugee policy and the terms of the peace. McCurry scrutinizes legal archives compiled by men, seeking glimpses of women they overlooked, whose voices enliven the book.

James M. McPherson

As Stephanie McCurry points out in this gem of a book, many historians who view the American Civil War as a ‘people’s war’ nevertheless neglect the actions of half the people. Her account of Southern white women’s participation in rebel resistance, black women’s roles in their own emancipation, and the prostrated condition of the women as well as men of the planter class after the war paves the way to a better integration of women into the story of this era.

North Carolina Historical Review - Brian Neumann

Eloquently refutes the idea that ‘women are outside of war.’ Building on a generation of scholarship, she reminds us that women’s stories both shaped and were shaped by the American Civil War.

New Republic

As [McCurry] argues, women don’t just watch history from the sidelines; they make it, they act in it, they are very much part of it. To see women as innocent wallflowers in need of protection could prove a deadly mistake when women were serving as smugglers, scouts, decoys, insurgents, and combatants; ignore them at your peril.

Drew Gilpin Faust

Stephanie McCurry challenges us once again to look at the Civil War through a different lens. She demonstrates how women’s participation changed not only their lives but the very understanding of war itself—its laws, its mechanisms of violence, its legacies and aftermath. In this brilliant exposition of the politics of the seemingly personal, McCurry illuminates previously unrecognized dimensions of the war’s elemental impact.

New Republic - Brenda Wineapple

As [McCurry] argues, women don’t just watch history from the sidelines; they make it, they act in it, they are very much part of it. To see women as innocent wallflowers in need of protection could prove a deadly mistake when women were serving as smugglers, scouts, decoys, insurgents, and combatants; ignore them at your peril.

Times Literary Supplement - Amy Murrell Taylor

Identifies a durable commitment to patriarchy that outlasted slavery and sustained white supremacy through the Civil War and beyond…McCurry sets out to view the South’s ordeal in the Civil War ‘through women’s eyes,’ a perspective too often ignored in histories of warfare.

Washington Post - Chandra Manning

Readers expecting hoop-skirted ladies soothing fevered soldiers’ brows will not find them here…It explodes the fiction that men fight wars while women idle on the sidelines.

From the Publisher

"[Stephen McCurry] demonstrates how women's participation changed not only their lives but the very understanding of war itself--its laws, its mechanisms of violence, its legacies and aftermath. In this brilliant exposition of the politics of the seemingly personal, McCurry illuminates previously unrecognized dimensions of the war's elemental impact." -Drew Gilpin Faust, author of This Republic of Suffering

Wall Street Journal

Correcting histories that erase women’s share in wartime work, McCurry reminds us that ‘Women are never just witnesses to war.’

New Yorker

Traces three narratives to argue that ‘there is no Civil War history without women in it.’ Women waged grassroots campaigns that informed the new concept of ‘Civilian as Enemy’—the trial of the Confederate spy Cara Judd altered martial law—and shaped the Union’s refugee policy and the terms of the peace. McCurry scrutinizes legal archives compiled by men, seeking glimpses of women they overlooked, whose voices enliven the book.

JULY 2020 - AudioFile

Teri Schnaubelt gives a brisk and energetic narration of this look at the role of women in the American Civil War. McCurry notes how women, free and enslaved, Northern and Southern, were active participants in furthering the goals of whatever side they supported. The challenge of how to deal with supposed noncombatants/civilians has always been a part of warfare and leads to many messy circumstances. As the war continued, the treatment of noncombatants became increasingly harsh. Schnaubelt has a clear voice and a direct, forceful delivery that may be due in part to the author’s tone. Her pace is brisk and her intonation somewhat staccato, but the listener is able to follow. M.T.F. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170580316
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	04/15/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged

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