Confederate Daughters: Coming of Age during the Civil War

5. The Confederate Belle Ideal

 4HE #ONFEDERATE "ELLE )DEAL SOME NINETEEN YEARS AFTER the end of the war, Caroline Joachimson, a South Carolina native living in New York City, penned her reminiscence of life behind the Confederate lines. Her story begins with a household of young women sitting quietly at home sewing and knitting items for soldiers while awaiting news of whether their male kin, including Joachimson’s brother, had enlisted in the Confederate army. Suddenly Cecil, her eldest sister, is surprised to see her sweetheart enter the room. The young man, according to Joachimson, was “grand in his magnificence of figure, showing symmetry and repressed strength in every limb, over the general height by several portions” and a “specimen of physical health and beauty” much like, in her words, the Greek god Apollo. Yet, her sister refuses to greet the young man because he had yet to join the Confederate army and vows to have nothing more to do with him until that time. Cecil’s beau then whispers to his betrothed that he, in fact, had enlisted with the local company. The news filled the room with excitement as the younger sisters shouted with joy while Cecil kissed her now soldier-beau. Joachimson then shifts the focus of her story to several months into the war where the reader finds the sisters engaged in every effort to support the Confederate cause. Scenes of young women spending countless hours hovering around a circle stitching clothing for the “gallant soldiers” were common, according to Joachimson, as were southern daughters sacrificing their material comforts for the good of the cause. “One by one,” she recalled, “they gave up their expensive ornaments, their jewelry, their silk dresses—nothing was held back or bestowed grudgingly—and proud of doing all they could.” Joachimson also brought attention to another crucial role for her peers during the conflict, the social and romantic relations between young women and Confederate soldiers. Such “distractions” for 129 soldiers—from extravagant parties to short rides in the countryside—in her estimation boosted the morale of soldiers and allowed them to carry on the fight. Joachimson ends her narrative with the loss of Cecil’s beau and her brother toward the end of the war. These sacrifices, she concludes, were a source of enormous grief for her and her family but necessary to sustain a cause she truly believed was just.1 Examining young women’s recollections, like those of Joachimson, reveals how those who came of age in the war contributed to the Lost Cause culture of the South. Contained in the pages of the stories written by members of Joachimson’s age group, whether for private or public use, are the memories of a generation of southern daughters who hoped to place their unique mark on how history would judge the Confederacy. How they attempted to come to terms with the consequences of war, namely defeat, emancipation, and financial ruin, reflected their stage of development during the Confederacy’s short-lived existence. Youth became the central theme and the means of reconciling loss and understanding just what all of the turmoil meant in their lives. Age also became a way for this generation to articulate to the next one their place within this saga of southern history. While regional literary figures carefully constructed what historians describe as the metanarrative of the Lost Cause, young women of the war generation worked to create an image of themselves in wartime that fit within the growing cultural battle to venerate the Confederacy.2 Young women’s literary contribution likewise put forth a cultural vision for the New South. The war precipitated changes to the southern social, economic, and political order. The destruction of slavery and the transformation of thousands of slaves into freedmen and women created a sense of anxiety among white southerners, who saw this period as nothing short of social chaos. Moreover, the disfranchisement of former Confederate supporters, along with the election of Republican governments in the South, replaced the hegemonic rule of white, slaveholding elites of the Old South. In response, whites turned to a variety of legal and extralegal means for resurrecting the racial order. Southern daughters, who had now reached adulthood, saw that they too had a responsibility in promoting this return to white supremacy, and their postwar reminiscences became the vehicle for articulating their vision of the New South’s racial order. In the aftermath of Appomattox, and the subsequent surrender of the remaining Confederate armies...