The Impact of the Civil War on a Southern Marriage: Clement and Virginia Tunstall Clay of Alabama

THE IMPACT OF THE CIVIL WAR ON A SOUTHERN MARRIAGE: CLEMENT AND VIRGINIA TUNSTALL CLAY OF ALABAMA Carol K. Bleser Frederick M. Heath Although the Southern belle is frequently depicted in popular novels of the Old South, she is harder to find in the actual historical records. Nevertheless, authentic belles did exist in the nineteenth-century South, and they were sought after by men, both young and old, who expected them to be pretty, unmarried, affluent, charming, fashionable, and flirtatious . In addition, the classic Southern belle was expected to have rudimentary skills at a musical instrument, the French language, and the art of flattering conversation. Playing this dependent and ornamental role not only trained women to manipulate men, important in a patriarchal society, but also had immediate practical compensations because an accomplished player could hope to marry a man of wealth and social position . While the goal for a belle was to marry for love, marry they did in any case, for, rightly or wrongly, they believed that marriage would provide them with social rank, material benefits, freedom, and companionship , and thus was far more desirable than remaining single. Once married, the belle usually disappeared from the social scene. The burdens of bearing children in rapid succession, of caring for a husband , and of managing a household left them little time to amuse either themselves or others. As Scarlet O'Hara put it, "Married women never have any fun." A few married women, however, never stopped behaving as if they were still belles. They continued to flirt, to pose at the center of groups of competing males, and to spark the devotion of presThisarticle is a revisedversion of a paper read before a session ofthe Southern Historical Association's meeting at Charleston, South Carolina, in November 1983. The authorswish to thank Barbara Welter andJaneTurner Censer fortheir comments on that paper and also to express their appreciation to the National Endowment forthe Humanities for awarding Professor Heath a summer stipend, 1980, and Professor Bleser a fellowship, 1983-84. The marriage of the Clays is one of ten unions to be explored by the authors in a booklength study on marriage in the mid-nineteenth-century South. There they will explore, among other things, the hypothesis that the loss of the Civil War and its aftermath produced profound alterations in the internal dynamics of many Southern marriages. 198civil war history tigious men. These wives, including the famous diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut, were often free from the responsibilities that occupied most married women. Having no children and usually no home of her own to manage, Chesnut collected admirers in order to escape from boredom and to wield influence over the men around her, many of whom she considered inferior to herself. ' Similar on the surface in many ways to Mary Boykin Chesnut was Virginia Tunstall Clay. Both women dazzled men. Virginia's 1843 marriage to Clement Claiborne Clay united her with a husband whose political prominence gave her opportunities to seek attention from men of importance. Their childlessness and his failure to provide her with a home of her own freed Virginia from the responsibilities borne by most wives. Virginia Clay, ambitious, self-centered, energetic, attractive, and sociable, attempted for over twenty years to be a married belle, a role through which she enjoyed some of the delights of her single days and achieved both recognition and influence. The Civil War, however, which altered so many lives in so many ways, brought changes which enabled Virginia to apply her talents to purposes other than merely pleasing men. Virginia Tunstall was born on January 16, 1825, in Nash County, North Carolina. Her mother, Ann Arrington Tunstall, died before Virginia was one year old, and her father left his daughter to be raised by relatives, of which there were more than enough. Her mother had twenty half-brothers and half-sisters.2 Sometime before she turned eight, Virginia went to live with her aunt and uncle, Mary Ann and Henry Collier, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. There she grew up, living at times with the Colliers and at other times with her mother's half-brother, Alfred Battle, and his wife, Millicent, both families being members of...