Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War & Reconstruction by Allen Guelzo (self help books to read TXT) ๐
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- Author: Allen Guelzo
Read book online ยซFateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War & Reconstruction by Allen Guelzo (self help books to read TXT) ๐ยป. Author - Allen Guelzo
In some instances, Confederate women put up spirited resistance to the Union occupation forces. Peter Osterhaus, a Prussian-born Federal general in the Army of the Tennessee, was asked by a Mississippi woman if he wouldnโt make war on women and children; he replied that as far as he could see, โthe women carried on this war. He had intercepted many a letter from the young ladies in which they urged their lovers to fight well and never give up.โ After Baton Rouge fell to Federal forces in 1862, Sarah Morgan and her sister Antoinette made small Confederate flags for themselves; Morgan โput the stem in my belt, pinned the flag to my shoulder, and walked down town, creating great excitement among women & childrenโ and among the Federal occupation troops. When Confederate cavalry stampeded in panic through Winchester, Virginia, in 1864, โa large number of the most respected ladies joined hands & formed a line across the principal street, telling the cowardly Cavalrymen that they should not go any further unless they ran their horses over their bodies.โ Beholding the Winchester women from the Union perspective, one Union general sneered that โHell is not full enough, there must be more of these Secession women of Winchester to full it up.โ53
In New Orleans, Confederate women grew so hostile and malevolent in their behavior that the occupation commander, Benjamin Butler, issued a general order that threatened that โwhen any female shall by word, gesture, or movement, insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States, she shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocationโโin other words, a prostitute. Butlerโs proclamation was ill-timed and even more ill-wordedโit even aroused unfavorable comment in the British Parliamentโbut it did underscore Butlerโs frustration with women who refused to behave passively in the face of male conquest. What Butler failed to see behind the contempt the New Orleans women had for Yankee soldiers was the corresponding contempt they nurtured for the Confederate men who had abandoned them to Butlerโs unkind embrace, and what Butlerโs proclamation unwittingly underscored for Confederate women was how exposed and undefended the Confederacy had left them in their hour of peril. Poorer women who were not quite on the same social level as the โrespected ladiesโ of Winchester stated their disgust more frankly. โThe men of Atlanta have brought an everlasting stain on their name,โ wrote Julia Davidson, an angry Georgia farm wife. โInstead of remaining to defend their homes, they have run off and left Atlanta to be defended by an army of women and children. โฆ God help us for there is no help in man.โ54
For that reason, by 1862, fewer Confederate women were lending their aid to recruitment duties, or sending their men off willingly. Some were refusing to keep up farms, and others were demanding that the Confederate government return their men. In many cases, Southern farm women and plantersโ wives were forced to rely on male slaves to run their farms and plantations for them, which in most cases dangerously loosened the bonds of slave discipline. The Confederate Congress responded sluggishly with a series of conscription exemptions designed to keep the most critically needed men at the most critical jobs. But many of the exemptions, especially the infamous โtwenty-nigger law,โ only fanned the resentment of the yeoman classes without doing much to improve the Southโs chances.
As the blockade further pinched Southern resources, even the wealthiest Southern women were besieged with the need to economize, while the yeoman farmers slipped into outright poverty. โWe are all in a sadly molting condition,โ wrote Mary Chesnut in the fall of 1863. โWe had come to the end of our good clothes in three years, and now our only resource was to turn them upside down or inside outโmending, darning, patching.โ George Washington Whitman was amazed at the wretched conditions he found among the once prosperous farms of northern Virginia in 1862: โThe villages we have passed through are the most God forsaken places I ever saw, the people seem to have next to nothing to eat as the men have all gone in the Secesh army, and how they are going to get through the winter I dont know.โ55
Southern women were being forced to assume roles of independence for which they had little preparation, and the independence that events foisted on them was not always with the kind of independence they might have welcomed. At the same time, however, Southern men were becoming ever more critically dependent on the women for supplies of food from the fields and clothing from the home. The bargain of โproperโ spheres was turning upside down as the Confederacy weakened, and Southern women, far from rallying round the flag, now turned on Confederate men in rage. โI am so sick of trying to do a manโs business,โ complained Elizabeth Neblett to her soldier-husband in 1863. โI have a great mind to get
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