The Rhetoric of Rebel Women: Civil War Diaries and Confederate Persuasion

2. A Ladylike Resistance? Finding the Time, Place, and Means for Voicing Political Allegiances

55 2 A Ladylike Resistance? Finding the Time, Place, and Means for Voicing Political Allegiances �In 1862, a Vanity Fair contributor described letters written by Southern white women found among Confederate soldiers’ belongings as violent in content and “almost always wretchedly written, helplessly spelt, and ungrammatical enough.” A subsequent article claimed, “[P]‍rofanity and blasphemy are considered a mark of loyalty in [Southern] women.” Another portrayal in the Northern press directly challenged the antebellum image of the Southern lady, replacing it with one marked by wayward words and actions: “Among the fallacies dissipated by this war is the one which assumed that to Southern ladies belonged a species of letters patent for dignity and the proprieties of behavior. But the facts prove them to be, after all, weak-minded sisters [. . .] more inclined to insolence, peevishness, and an insulting manner and bearing toward those they please to call Yankees.” Focusing on language use, the articles described Southern white women as violent, crass, and rhetorically uncontrolled. Recent historical scholarship, too, has often described secessionist women’s wartime political speech as curious yet thoughtless and inconsequential, seeing it as “harangues” that, if having any impact, served only to momentarily amuse Yankee troops and to provide “emotional catharsis” for its speakers.1 This chapter looks more closely at Confederate women’s political resistance during the Civil War and questions the stereotype of the thoughtlessly vocal she-rebel whose political rhetorics were careless and ignored by their intended audiences. Absent in previous discussions about Southern white women’s wartime speech is attention to their rhetorical purposes and contexts. The evidence presented in many diaries indicates that women frequently considered the impact of their political words or nonverbal � A Ladylike Resistance? � 56 resistance upon their immediate context, their safety, and their reputation. Evidence also suggests that these rhetors had audiences who took their political activities seriously. Union officials, for example, passed orders against female patriotic displays, sentenced women to prison, and banished others from Union-held territories because of their rhetorical resistance. As these Union officials likely recognized, through their resistant rhetorics, women could have an impact not only on the Union men who were their primary audiences but also upon their local communities, including other Southern women, soldiers, and civilians, cultivating patriotism and shaping a shared Confederate identity. As such, Confederate women’s wartime political rhetorics were often considered as more than curious or amusing; they were potentially dangerous.2 Understandably, fellow historians of women’s rhetoric might feel uneasy about such a reexamination of privileged Southern white women’s political resistance. Unlike many of the women rightfully recognized for their previously overlooked political rhetorics in service of social change, the women in this study supported the Confederacy and viewed slavery as essential for maintaining their privileged lifestyles.3 As Joan Marie Johnson has observed, “Historians of women have struggled with the question of how to interpret activist women with conservative agendas.” In rhetorical history, though, a focus on Confederate women’s political rhetorics contributes to ongoing efforts to better understand how women in the nineteenth century worked to establish political roles, and it provides insight into Southern white women’s struggles to establish political voices within a culture that defined the “Southern lady” in opposition to Northern women, especially those challenging traditional dress and increasingly taking to the podium to engage in public politics. As George Fitzhugh asserted in his 1861 article “The Women of the South,” Southern women “confine themselves exclusively to the pursuits and associations becoming their sex and abhor the female lecturers and abolition and free love oratrixes, and Bloomers, and strong-minded women of the North.” Some diarists concurred with Fitzhugh’s disapproval of Northern women orators. Georgia’s Susan Cornwall for one, criticized “women who have forgotten their sex and in their immodest love of publicity, have mounted the rostrum and poured forth incendiary harangues.”4 For numerous white women, though, traditional assumptions regarding gender-becoming pursuits were not so clear-cut in the Civil War South. How, some questioned, could they publicly voice their political allegiances while still behaving as ladies? � A Ladylike Resistance? � 57 “We Shall Be Praised for Our Actions”: Patriotic Rhetorical Responsibilities A number of Confederate women, especially young women, believed that their words contributed to the war effort.5 Southern white women were often given credit in the Southern media and derided in Union publications for encouraging their men to continue fighting...