n recent years, historians (including this reviewer) have examined the complex reactions of Confederate women to the Civil War with an emphasis on ambivalence, class conflict, and new gender roles. There has also been an emphasis on disaffection from the Confederacy and sometimes from men in general. Much of this scholarship has attempted to revise and even displace the stock contemporary and historical images of Confederate women as fervent and unwavering patriots willing to make any sacrifice for their beloved cause. Perhaps the interpretative pendulum has swung a bit far, and the publication of Ellen Renshaw House 's diary should remind us that the traditional picture of fire-breathing and unreconstructed "secesh females" had some basis in fact. Born in Savannah in 1843, young Ellen Renshaw House moved with her family to Knoxville, Tennessee, shortly before the war. Two of her brothers joined the Confederate army, but the family lived in a part of the state deeply divided between Unionists and rebel sympathizers. The House family owned a few slaves, but researchers looking for new evidence on the disintegration of slavery during the war will not find much information here, because Ellen House seldom mentioned "servants" or slavery. There are a few diary entries beginning in January 1863, but she started recording her experiences regularly in September. This first and longest section covers the family 's experience in Knoxville under Federal occupation. From the opening
Madame C.J. Walker was born on December 23, 1867 in Delta, Louisiana and was named Sarah Bredlove. Her parents were Owen and Mernirva Bredlove. She was the youngest of six kids and was the first one born into freedom, after the Emancipation Proclamation. Her parents and siblings were all slaves owned by Robert W. Burney at the Madison Parish plantation. Her mother died in 1878 of cholera which is bacterial disease. Her father re-married and left Sarah to be an orphan at the age of seven and had to live with her older sister. At the age of fourteen she married a man named Moses McWilliams. When she turned twenty her husband died, but they had a daughter named Leila McWilliams.
Sarah Breedlove was born on December 23, 1967, in Delta, Louisiana, to her parents Owens and Minerva Breedlove, Sarah was one of six children. Her parents and elders were slaves on Madison Parish plantation. She was the first child in her family born to freedom, after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. Sarah’s mother died 1972, and her father remarried and died shortly thereafter. Sarah moved in with her sister and brother in-law, Willie Powell, at age 14 years old, she married Moses McWilliams, to escape Powell’s mistreatment, and three years later her daughter was born, Leila McWilliams. When Sarah turned 20 years old her husband died. She later moved to St. Louis where three of her brothers lived. They were all barbers at a local
In the 1870s, they built a third home for Mary Chesnut, which they called Sarsfield, which was specifically in her name. In 1884, her mother and her husband died within three weeks of each other. In her last years, Chesnut was alone and only had Sarsfield as a land possession, so she began to think of writing in order to earn money. she began to organize her diary for publication. She corrected a lot of her writing with the desire to publish it, so it is difficult to determine whether or not she really hated slavery or if she changed it after the war was over. Overall, it did seems as thoough Chesnut had long felt the way she had in 1861: "I wonder if it be a sin to think slavery a curse to any land. Sumner said not one word of this hated institution which is not true. Men and women are punished when their masters and mistresses are brutes, not when they do wrong-and then we live surrounded by prostitutes. An abandoned woman is sent out of any decent house elsewhere. Who thinks any worse of a Negro or mulatto woman for being a thing we can’t name? God forgive us, but ours is a monstrous system, a wrong and an iniquity" (Chesnut, p. 29). The diary of Mary Chesnut, a remarkable account of the Civil War from the point of view of a southern woman, slave holder, and plantation owner, was published in 1905 under the title A Diary from
Madam C. J. Walker was born on December 23rd, 1867 as Sarah Breedlove, to Owen and Minerva Breedlove, who were former slaves enslaved to Robert W. Burney’s Madison Parish. She was the first of child born into freedom among her five siblings, after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Her siblings included one older sister, Louvenia and four brethren: James, Solomon, Owen Jr. and Alexander. At six years of age, her mother passed away probably
Some of the subjects she talked about were the Civil War battle at Honey Springs, the Creek Indian culture, the Creek
Sarah was born when the Emancipation Proclamation was recently issued, so she did not get a taste of slavery. Although she didn’t go through slavery, her parents Owen Breedlove, and Minerva Breedlove, worked as sharecroppers, which meant they didn't have a good stable job and had a hard time paying for food, and other necessities for six children. Shortly after being born, both her parents died when she was only five. As a result, she would move to Vicksburg, Mississippi with her sister, Louvenia, younger brother, Solomon. By the age of seven, Sarah was toiling in cotton fields at her sister’s house.
In 1861, Ann Rinaldi wrote a story about a strong 16 year-old named Sarah Louise who was lived on a farm in Michigan near a small town. She had to deal with her abusive father also seven other siblings as well. When her father tries to make her marry a sluggish abusive friend of his, she turns around and take things into her own hands and runs away to stay with her aunt. There she goes into Union Grey, disguised herself as a man to be a Union soldier and to fight in the Civil
One of the social aspects during the time 1861-1865 revolved around the new roles given to women. While the hundreds of thousands of men went to war, women were left to manage their new roles as head of the household. What this means is that they now had to undertake the jobs the men would usually do. Some of these new roles included running farms and stores, and working in government, factories, and offices, as well. The war also permitted women to enter the former male-orientated professions such as teaching, civil service, and nursing, due to the shortage of men (Keene, 392).
Women during the Antebellum Period we held to high expectations of how they were to behave. They had virtues that they adhered to. After the war broke out, the lives of women changed, and the roles they played significantly impacted the way women were viewed following the war. The Civil War was the result of decades worth of tensions amongst the northern and southern states that had ultimately ended with a war. The states had been feuding over many issues including expansion, slavery, and state’s rights (History.com Staff “American Civil War History”). The Civil war broke out in 1861 and continued until 1865. Prior to the war women stayed home and kept up things at the house, but after the war broke out, women felt they needed to help the
The novel Mothers of Invention allows readers to achieve perception of the lower to upper-class women of the confederate south through their own eyes and words. The author, Drew Gilpin Faust, uses five hundred women’s well-kept diaries, letters, essays, memoirs, fiction, and poetry as well as Newspapers and significant political documents to reference how the Civil War molded their lives. Faust illustrates that many of these women lost their social standings, traditional gender roles, families, and homes. These women were able to redefine what it meant to be southern women of the Confederate war as well as develop new understandings of themselves. In this paper I will be discussing how southern women contributed to the war effort, what hardships these women faced and how they dealt with them, and why southern women turned against the Confederate war effort.
When the American Civil War began on April 12th, 1861, over 3 million Union and Confederate soldiers prepared for battle. Men from all over America were called upon to support their side in the confrontation. While their battles are well documented and historically analyzed for over a hundred years, there is one aspect, one dark spot missing in the picture: the role of women in the American Civil War. From staying at home to take care of the children to disguising themselves as men to fight on the battlefield, women contributed in many ways to the war effort on both sides. Though very few women are recognized for their vital contributions, even fewer are
When you hear women in the civil war, what do you think? Some people think can that really be, women are not meant for war, all they are needed for is cooking and cleaning and taking care of their children. Well everyone who stereotypes women of that is wrong, because just like men women did have some part of the civil war. Although they may have not fought in the war, they did help with the recovery of the injured men so that they can go back and fight in the war. Being a union nurse is not the only way they were apart of the war, some women did things that went down in history. Just like Harriet Tubman, who made history because she was the creator of the Underground Railroad. She was not the only women who was part of the army and made a
The motherly aspects stands out in her letters as she includes Miss Virginia in all her writings as if she was a child of her own. She is careful to send kind words of uplift to her Miss Virginia and never displays an ill tone when speaking about her masters. She is always protecting those leading those around her to compliant to the conditions in which they under. In an example of keeping things in the best of conditions as possible, she writes and tell her son to “be genteel as possible and to be kind to her masters and to take care of them (they are the best friends they have in the world) (Valentine 1837 #1). Many of these women were used as a means to keep the slavery institution alive for their masters. To these men, slave women were a necessity to the reproduction of lives and their labor which meant stability of livelihood for them.
After four years of seemingly endless battle between a divided nation, more than 600,000 people were killed. These lives, however, were not given in vain. Had it not been for the American Civil War, abolition may not have been carried out. The nation might have remained divided. Women might have remained confined to their roles as the "homemakers." Although the Civil War was fought in hopes of preserving the nation and ridding it of slavery, another war raged on within the depths of this war--the women's war. Serving as nurses both in the hospital and on the battlefields, women came to know a whole
Frances Wright also known as Fanny Wright was born on the 6th of September 1795 in Dundee. She was orphaned at the age of two. Furthermore, she had a sister. Both sisters inherited a fortune after the death of their parents and moved to London. 19 years later she moved back to Scotland to live with her uncle. She spent time there reading and composing poetry .Also, she shaped her “materialistic philosophy” .few years later she returned to America to live with her sister. Because she was convinced of the need to establish a colony where slaves might both work for their freedom, she donated a big part of her lands to shelter those who were enslaved and worked on freeing them.