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Recent Work on Southern Women & the Civil War 1989 Civil Wars Women and the Crisis of Southern Nationalism by George C. Rable 1990 Tara Revisited: Women, War, & the Plantation Legend by Catherine Clinton 1995 The Civil War as a Crisis in Gender by Lee Ann White 1996 Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust

1867 Woman’s Work in the Civil War: A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience Mary C. Vaughan 1866 Women of the War: Their Heroism and Self-sacrifice by Frank Moore 1906 The Women of the Confederacy by JL Underwood 1920 Women of the South in War Times by Matthew Page Andrew

“I never felt my inability to do justice to any subject so keenly as I do when attempting to do justice to the characters, services, and devotion of the women of the Confederacy. They gave to the armies their husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers, with aching hearts…But they believed their sacrifice was due to their country and her cause. They assumed the care of their homes and of the children and aged…and like angels of mercy they visited and attended the hospitals…There was a courage and a heroism in their lives superior to that which animated our brave men…which could only come from God and love of country.” ----JL Underwood 1906

Home Manufacture “I do not like the idea of your weaving. It is mortifying to me. I wish you not to to do it.” “ I did not espouse you for no such purposes…that you might remain handsome…”

Nursing “I wanted to be useful…and tried my best, but at the sight of one face that the surgeon uncovered, telling me that it must be washed, I thought I should faint…The surgeon asked me if I would wash his wound. I tried to say yes, but the thought of it made me so faint that I could only stagger towards the door. As I passed, my dress brushed against a pile of amputated limbs heaped on the floor.”

“I shall ever take on myself anything that a servant can do as well,, and never do anything that a lady may not with perfect propriety do. I shall not talk familiarly with patients…In fact I shall maintain every particle of the dignity which belongs to my sex and position….”

“It is dreadful to dwell on insurrections, yet many hour have I laid awake in my life thinking of our danger.”

“I am so sick of trying to do a man’s business when I am nothing but a poor contemptible piece of multiplying human flesh tied to the house by a crying young one, looked upon as belonging to a race of inferior beings.”

Slavery “I sometimes think that the fewer a person owns, the better off he is. “ “… I would rather do all the work than be worried with a house full of servants that do what, how and when they please.” “I wish that the Abolitionists & the Negroes had a country to themselves…yes…separate us in the world to come, let us not be together.”

“So often lately, I have noticed girls carrying on over each other kissing each other and so on. I think it looks right foolish sometimes.”

Frivolity “Can mirth and reckless revelry hold high carnival in social circles, while every passing breeze chants the requiem of dying heroes? …Are southern women so completely oblivious of the claims of patriotism and humanity, that in this season of direst extremity they tread the airy mazes of the dance, while the matchless champions of freedoms are shivering in bloody trenches or lying on stark frozen fields of glory.”

You must come home… “Confederacy! I almost hate the word!” “Oh how I do pray this war was at an end. If the Yankees are going to whip us I wish they would hurry about it.” “Who thinks or cares for victory now!?” “I think you have done your share in this war.” Or others “you have served long enough”...“give up now while you have life. “Am I willing to give my husband to gain Atlanta for the Confederacy? No, No, No, a thousand times No.”

“I have said many a time, that, if we did not succeed, the women of the South would be responsible.” ---Kate Cummings