Trials and Triumphs: The Women of the American Civil War (review)

272CIVIL WAR HISTORY minor errors, although not serious ones, did escape the annotator. Additional and better maps would have enhanced the book. Both the general reader and scholar will find Andrews's memoir interesting and useful. Richard R. Duncan Georgetown University Trials and Triumphs: The Women of the American Civil War. By Marilyn Mayer Culpepper. (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1992. Pp. 427. $24.95.) Marilyn Mayer Culpepper's book is filled with colorful anecdotes and quotations about the philosophical, emotional, and economic challenges Union and Confederate women faced. Drawing on a wide range of published and unpublished diaries and letters, she includes well-known women, such as Southern diarist Mary Chestnut, but also quotes less prominent chroniclers, including a wounded soldier's wife from Courtland, Michigan, and a woman who raised funds for Confederate troops in Columbia, South Carolina. The result is a book that is both readable and informative. The best sections of this book focus on the emotional tribulations of Civil War women. The author devotes an entire chapter to "Anxiety—The Irrepressible Companion," in which she discusses the mental strains especially of Southern women, who worried constantly about the safety of men in uniform and feared the possibility of serious illness for their children at a time when the best doctors were at the warfront. Unfortunately, Culpepper provides little interpretation. Indeed she states in her introduction that "There are few conclusions drawn here. The material is presented with as little interpretation as possible—the women must speak for themselves and their times" (3). For this reason, and because the book contains no index and somewhat sketchy documentation, this book will be of limited value to serious scholars ofthe Civil War. Moreover, Culpepper seems to accept the words of her diarists at face value. In a chapter entitled "Slaves, Soldiers, Free People," she quotes slave-owning women, who speak about the immorality of the institution, while failing to emphasize that few of these women ever seriously considered manumitting their slaves because ultimately they realized that their economic security was based on the institution . Indeed this book offers little in terms of an African-American perspective , a point only partially forgiven by Culpepper's reminder that written records by slave women are few. The book is organized topically. Although the author is to be commended for tackling a broad range of issues, including the plight of refugees, food and medicine scarcities, and charitable activities and nursing, there are gaps as well. Most of Culpepper's diarists and letter-writers appear to be well-to-do, although in most cases we learn litde about class distinctions. While the author 's desire to focus on the words rather than backgrounds of these women BOOK REVIEWS273 is understandable, the reader is often left wanting to know more, especially about how these women and their families fared by the end of the war. Culpepper does not include any significant discussion of the thousands of women who found jobs in government service and private industry during the war. Although she discusses the challenges women faced running farms and businesses without men, concluding that while many complained they also blossomed in their role as independent individuals, there is little analysis of how the majority of women coped without men. Forced by circumstance to abandon rigidly held notions about women's appropriate sphere, thousands of women took on responsibilities and faced adversity they never imagined they would have to accept. Quoting from hundreds of manuscript collections by Southern and Northern women, Marilyn Mayer Culpepper has shown us the wealth ofresources available to historians. Interpretation of their meaning still awaits. Wendy Hamand Venet Eastern Illinois University Lincoln's Loyalists: Union Soldiersfrom the Confederacy. By Richard Nelson Current. (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992. Pp. ix, 253. $21.95.) In a seminal article in i960, historian Carl Degler reminded us that "There Was Another South." This South was composed of yeoman farmers who owned few if any slaves, tended to be Whigs in politics, and opposed secession . Many ofthem lived in the mountain areas ofTennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. While they may have disliked the Confederacy, the impression has been given that they were trapped by...