Cities of the Dead: Contesting the Memory of the Civil War in the South, 1865-1914

CHAPTER 4. The Politics of Manhood and Womanhood, 1865–1870

4 THE POLITICS OF MANHOOD AND WOMANHOOD, 1865–1870 When viewing Confederate Decoration Days during Reconstruction, northern commentators often reached the conclusion that their former male enemies hid behind the skirts of women. Periodicals suggested that the events served as thinly disguised political rallies for the Democratic Party and that men let their women organize a ritual that allowed the rebel spirit to thrive within a mourning cloak. Incensed editors of the Confederate press sloughed o√ these allegations, claiming that everyone had the right to care for their dearly departed and that the Cities of the Dead were not places of political controversy. Despite the rebuttal, northerners persisted in identifying women as the purveyors of Confederate sentiment who helped prevent the wounds of disunion from healing.∞ Women who had supported the Confederacy relished being recognized for performing the work of a nation, even if their e√ort was on behalf of a failed government. Through reburying the dead and commemorating the Confederacy, women did more than simply find a new channel through 78 The Politics of Manhood and Womanhood which to influence public policy. Because of the nervous federal authorities who looked for treason in a variety of public acts, Confederate nationalism had to be expressed, in part, in the domestic world of white women. The Cities of the Dead created by women provided a means for rebel resistance to continue in a form of guerrilla warfare through mourning, yet the ladies memorial associations conducted this often-acknowledged political e√ort without threatening the broader contours of male-female relations. Southern white women determined the content of ceremonies, mobilized men to collect and rebury the dead, and raised funds for all of these concerns. Perhaps because federal o≈cials meddled in their a√airs, the women believed that they protected the memory of the Confederacy from oblivion. Their e√orts earned them the recognition of many southerners —and not a few northerners—as providing the occasions that kept the Confederate past alive. Whenever federal authorities looked the other way, speakers used these ceremonies to reinforce rejection of Reconstruction . The organizers of these events and the ladies memorial societies that administered them, however, had little thought for creating upheaval in gender relations. Drew Faust’s characterization of white southern women as a ‘‘paradox of progressivism and reaction’’ aptly captures the position of these elite women who recognized their contribution to a broader cause beyond the domestic world, even as they sought a partnership with men in preserving the world both had known.≤ By performing their job as caretakers of men, alive or dead, southern women also helped fashion public rituals that sorted out new ideas about men and women. Military defeat and the end of slavery had opened public space to black people; freedom celebrations warned white southerners of the change that had come. African American males marched in the streets; black women filled the sidewalks and town squares as spectators and participants in celebrations of the defeat of former masters.≥ Whoever appeared in public spaces, and under what auspices, testified to the distribution of power at a particular moment. In the simplest terms, the conventions of public behavior determined whether a black or a white man stepped into the gutter to let the other pass on a sidewalk, or if a white man gave way to a black woman. While these are important matters for an individual’s sense of honor and worth, more was at stake in the use of public space than whose boots were dirtied. Wars often leave loose ends concerning the roles of men and women. The Civil War had removed a fundamental means of distinguishing the privileged position The Politics of Manhood and Womanhood 79 of white men and women through the ownership of human beings, and it had left white men needing to resolve masculinity with defeat and with their political subjugation to Yankees.∂ Confederate observances showed the limits of what the vanquished accepted and warned of the resistance that lay beneath acquiescence. Under the circumstances, it was small wonder that northerners saw in these events, and in the organizational activities of women, much more than occasions for remembering the dead. n n n organized sentiment Very quickly throughout the postwar South, ladies memorial associations emerged as a vital force in most communities. Organizers characterized their e√orts as merely fulfilling the extension of their supervision of mourning. Some women...