Southern Women and the Civil War

Southern Women and the Civil War Catherine Clinton I agreed to give this talk after I had such a good time at the Southern Association for Women Historians meeting in Houston on a similar program, where we got together to reminisce, swap stories, just about everything but deconstruct, because I think southern women's history is more about construction—brick by brick. In my youth, I was more interested in throwing them through windows, but now that I look back and see what nice work has been accumulating, I'm afraid I've become less fond of combat and more into the love fest. But I promise to go out on a few limbs today. A workshop on southern women's history is always a welcome advent, but especiaUy at this meeting where such an opportunity can create the possibility of even more exciting work. I remember back when books like George Rable's prizewinning Civil Wars, LeeAnn Whites's new The Civil War as a Crisis in Gender, Drew Faust's forthcoming Mothers of Invention, and my own Tara Revisited: Women, War and the Plantation Legend were just gleams in their authors' eyes. In addition to all of this exciting secondary work on women in the Confederacy, primary material is flowing hot off several presses; I call your attention to volumes forthcoming from Carol Bleser's new University of Georgia Series, Southern Voices From the Past (and encourage any of you sitting on wonderful letters and diaries to contact Carol about your diamonds in the rough). Civil War speciaUsts should look forward especially to Christine Jacobson's diary of DoUy Lunt Bürge, Marli Weiner's volume on Grace Elmore, EUzabeth Baer's project on Lucy Buck, and Lyde Cullen Sizer's anthology of the narratives of women rebel spies. But besides providing bibliography, I wanted to offer comments on southern women and Civil War Studies based on my own rather redheaded perspective. In my proposal to the program committee, I promised to "locate the emergence of southern women's history within the flowering of American women's history and the broadening of southern history during the 1970s and '80s and on into the 1990s, addressing questions of marginaUty, and the way in which gender has shifted historical issues dramatically." That would have been a fine beginning—until I found out I had only 15 minutes and three more topics to cover—so I will refer you to the introduction for Half Sisters of History: Southern Women and the American Past which covers the historical context. Next I said I would discuss the rising interest in letters and diaries and the subsequent series and other publishing ventures which promote this work—about half an hour—so I refer you to my © 1996 Journal of Women's History, Vol. 8 No. 3 (Fall) 164 Journal of Women's History Fall review essay "In Search of Southern Women's History" in the Summer 1992 volume of the Georgia Historical Quarterly, plus I know Margaret WoUe has a new series at Kentucky to go along with her exciting new book Daughters of Canaan, and Anne Scott, Mary Jo Buhle, and Jackie HaU have a series at the University of Illinois, where they are publishing Marli Weiner's book on South Carolina plantation mistresses. Also, Nell Painter and Linda Kerber have a series at the University of North Carolina Press, where they are publishing Laura Edwards's book on Reconstruction in North CaroUna. Indeed, there are now numerous people eager to publish books in this booming field. I also wanted to devote a substantial portion of my time to the Civil War as a case study for exciting work on southern women blah-blahblah —of course, it's anything but blah, it's explosive, if s invigorating, it's terrific, and I think Nina Silber and I made a pretty good case for this in Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War, so I'm just going to skip ahead to the end part of my proposal; but I do want to remind you that the above-mentioned collections I've edited feature the exciting work of two dozen emerging and established scholars...