A Woman's War: Southern Women, Civil War and the Confederate Legacy (review)

BOOK REVIEWS239 resistance, like the collage ofyoung LaGrange women who organized the "Nancy Harts," a female military unit which marched out to face the advancing Union army. Resistance is also reflected in the photographs of Hubbard Pryor, an escaped Polk County slave, who is seen clothed in the rags of slavery in one shot and in the next dressed in his new Union army uniform, a musket defiantly cradled in his arms. Perhaps the greatest strength of the work is the abundance of photographs from sources outside the major repositories. Bailey and Fraserthoroughly mined the state of Georgia in their quest for images. Although the Georgia Historical Society, university libraries, and the Georgia Department ofArchives and History are represented, most of the images were gleaned from smaller collections such as the Athens Public Library, Crawford W Long Museum, Troup County Archives, and the Thomas County Historical Society, not to mention a host of individual contributors. Use oftheserepositories points outthe richness ofcounty and local historical society collections usually overlooked by professional historians , including many of the authors in the Portraits ofConflict series. Professors Bailey and Fraser have made a major contribution by presenting the firstcomprehensive photographic examination ofthe Civil War in Georgia— and they have done it in a way that is both informative and pleasurable to read. Whether of a rawboned Emanuel County dirt farmer, a young Troup County widow, a black servant clad in Confederate gray, or of a landscape blasted by the shock of battle, these images relate the tragic story of a people at war in a way more powerful than mere words. W Todd Groce Georgia Historical Society A Woman 's War: Southern Women, Civil War and the Confederate Legacy. Edited by Edward D.C. Campbell Jr., and Kym S. Rice. (Richmond: Museum of the Confederacy and Charlottesville: University Press ofVirginia. Pp. xv, 264. $24.95.) In 1996 the Museum ofthe Confederacy celebrated its centennial with a special exhibition on Southern women during the Civil War. In her forward, Suzanne Lebsock calls this companion volume to the exhibit a "down payment" on a comprehensive history of Southern women's wartime experiences. Ten authors contribute to this deposit, including accomplished scholars of Southern women such as Drew Gilpin Faust, George C. Rabie, and Joan E. Cashin. The first four essays examine women during the war years, and the last two analyze the role of women in the post-war South. The opening essay by Faust, Rabie, and Thavolia Glymph provides an overview ofwomen during the era, emphasizing thevariables ofrace, class, and geographic location in assessing women's experiences. Based on primary source material this piece is a briefbut effective synthesis and a fine introduction to the topic. The essays on the war years seek to provide a sampling ofthe experiences of a broad range of women from plantation mistresses to contrabands. The most 240CIVIL WAR HISTORY intriguing is Cashin's examination of refugee women. By scanning personal diaries and secondary sources, Cashin provides rich detail on a shadowy area of the war. The refugee experience was profoundly disillusioning for most women, challenging their concepts of class and racial superiority and rupturing the "bargain between the sexes," which exchanged female dependency for male protections (53). In the next essay, Thavolia Glymph sheds similar light on another facet ofdisplaced women with an examination ofcontrabands.They lived precarious lives during the war, seen as a danger by Southern whites and as a problem by Union military leaders. By escaping to the Union lines they, like their male counterparts , played a crucial role in the transformation of the war into a conflict to end slavery. The third essay on the war years, by Kym S. Rice and Edward D. C. Campbell Jr., captures experiences of women through diary excerpts. The final two essays deal with women in the postwar South and reveal much about the limits on female behavior and the changes in women's roles in Southern society. John M. Coski and Amy R. Feely provide the context and background for Confederate Museum's founding, emphasizing the assertive role women played in the museum's creation. The most probing essay is the concluding piece by Marjorie Spruill Wheeler, in which...