Confederate Daughters: Coming of Age during the Civil War

1. "Our Bright Youth"

14 14 ±/UR "RIGHT 9OUTH² IN JUNE 1859, less than two years before the start of the Civil War, Susan Bradford, aged thirteen, was paying little attention to the brewing sectional conflict between the North and South. Bradford, of Pine Hill plantation near Tallahassee, Florida, spent her summer break from school aiding in the preparations for her sister’s wedding. As the daughter of Edward Bradford, former territorial governor of Florida and a prominent planter, Susan enjoyed the extravagant display that marked the marriage ceremonies of the Old South’s elite. She noted in her diary the numerous wedding presents and elaborate dresses as well as the many guests who came from all over the area to attend her sister’s wedding. Although her father had schooled her in the politics of the sectional conflict, the excitement over the wedding overshadowed any political concerns she had. Only in passing did Bradford mention the conflict during the wedding festivities after overhearing her older male kin engaged in “a serious talk” about the future of the South.1 Bradford, like many of her female peers, focused mainly on the normal activities of daily life. Not until 1860, when talk of secession circulated throughout the South, did young women realize that a dark storm was brewing on the horizon. The clouds of secession seemed but a passing concern to many young women whose youthful activities occupied most of their attention. Their education, relationships, religious faith, and social engagements comprised the center of their universe, serving as the basis of female youth culture among slaveholding society. It is at this point in their lives that we begin our exploration of what southern daughters stood to gain by the Confederacy’s success. By throwing their support behind secession and the war effort, young women hoped to maintain not only “Our Bright Youth” 15 a lifestyle to which they had grown accustomed but also a future they had come to expect.2 Traditional notions of female duty and respectability served as a guiding force in young women’s upbringing in the late antebellum era. Social prescriptions for these youths encouraged preparation for their eventual roles as wives, mothers, and slave mistresses. School and church inculcated the values of feminine duty to the home and family while promoting strict guidelines for their behavior, and their social engagements and courtships reinforced traditional views on gender expectations. These areas of teenage life, specifically family, church, social activities, and education, promoted a self-perception that supported conventional ideas of proper southern womanhood among the middling and elite classes of slaveholders . Training future women of the slaveholding South likewise entailed teaching adolescent females how to interact with slaves. Parents oversaw their daughters’ association with slaves both inside and outside the home and expected them to follow the prescribed model of race relations. Their domestic training, however, gave them very little practical experience in the day-to-day management of a home and its dependents. Yet as rigid and confining as their education in the ideals of southern womanhood was, adolescent females nevertheless relished the freedom that came with being young and single and found independence from social restrictions, even if just briefly, in the youth culture of the antebellum South. Their church, school, and family life, areas that informed this age-based culture, all provided avenues for social interaction and gave daughters a degree of control in their activities and relationships. On the eve of the Civil War, young women’s indoctrination into the racial and gendered order of the Old South was complete, and they anticipated the day when they would fill the ranks of their mothers and grandmothers. Education was a primary tool for preparing adolescent daughters for their future duties of wife. During childhood, most women either attended a neighborhood school or received private tutoring. Most fathers expressed concern over their daughters’ formal education and, when able, supervised their studies outside the classroom. As girls matured, however, parents wanted them not only to continue their formal education but paid closer attention to their cultivation of domestic skills and religious morality. Mothers and older female kin therefore assumed a “Our Bright Youth” 16 larger role in the education of young women as they approached adolescence . Schools and churches reinforced this transition to a more domestic and religious education.3 A key part of a young woman’s education was the female academy or seminary. In the 1830s, these institutions spread to meet the...