"Every Comfort, Freedom, and Liberty": A Case Study of Mississippi's Confederate Home

This case study of Mississippi's Confederate veteran home, popularly known as Beauvoir, challenges historians to see these southern facilities as more than relics of the Lost Cause. This state-run home had a diverse resident population that included women as early as 1904 and that also included three African-American residents. It provided well-trained physicians in the Beauvoir hospital, and a powerful and popular woman superintendent ran the home as early as 1926. This article analyzes the lives of the veterans, wives, and widows of Mississippi's Confederate home as well as the state's policies for them, revealing a facility connected to the Civil War, but grounded in New South efficiency, regulation, and reform.