Mothers of Invention:  Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War.  By Drew Gilpin Faust.  (Chapel Hill:  University of North Carolina, 1996.   Pp. xvi, 326). 

            Drew Gilpin Faust examines the inner conflicts and confusion experienced by literate, white, slaveholding women as a consequence of the Civil War.  Seeking to fill a gap between existing identity studies of free black men and women and of white male plantation owners, she argues that the social and military upheaval wrought by the war pushed women to reconsider their traditional roles of wife and mother that they had been trained to accept as elite southern daughters.  With established power and privilege in turmoil, women contemplated if they should undertake responsibilities of leadership and labor unfamiliar to them, how to accomplish the new expectations, and whether they were capable of success.  She suggests that a variety of factors including age, rural or urban residence, marital status, wartime living arrangements, and personal hardships shaped women’s responses.  Her title repeats the words of Southern women who termed themselves “mothers of invention” in a literal way, but Faust interprets a deeper meaning centered on the reinvention of a woman’s self-determined identity.

            The author considered the literary remains of over 500 Confederate women and extracted a handful of meaningful voices from letters, diaries, memoirs, and creative writing to demonstrate the fluctuation in their attitudes over time.  In fact, she chose this class of women for the potential insights they offered.  Organizing her evidence into topical chapters in a loose chronological format, Faust reveals women’s intimate thoughts on the subjects most important to them as they navigated the quagmire into which their worlds devolved.  Faust shows that Southern ladies discussed conventional topics concerning marriage, courtship, parenting, fashion, and entertainment, but they increasingly expressed worries over challenging supervisory duties, financial management, life-sustaining manufacturing and productivity, and political decisions—issues previously considered firmly outside their sphere of influence.  Her study separates them from their northern sisters whose democratization and reform activities rendered them indelicate and unladylike in the eyes of the Southern upper-class.

            Faust describes the progression of elite women’s positions as dedicated, patriotic supporters of the war with few outlets to contribute to the cause into stressed, resentful, overburdened detractors who sought an end to hostilities and the return of soldiers to their communities.  Interestingly, feelings of anger, self-loathing, and worthlessness characterized both extremes according to some letters.  In Faust’s estimation, Southern women’s world view from their secure private sphere became overwhelmed by a public arena filled with contradictions at every turn from how to manage slaves and overseers, to the propriety of manual labor, to how to adapt their clothing to their new functions.  The author provides ample quotes from women who felt betrayed by their men and their leaders who broke the social contract that offered them protection and support in exchange for subordination and self-denial.   

            Faust recognizes that her subjects are not members of an overlooked population that historians frequently seek to return to the larger narrative.  She rightly asserts, however, that the Civil War was a life-altering moment for elite women on the home front and that “many women…invented new selves designed…to resist change, to fashion the new out of as much of the old as could survive in the altered post-war world of the defeated Confederates, regional poverty, and black freedom (p. 8).”  As the author presents in her epilogue, some women appreciated the emerging opportunities and marginal independence the post-war era afforded them.  Others welcomed the return of white male patriarchy with its advantages of protection and support with few pangs of sacrifice.  While many women likely fell betwixt and between, that middle ground remains hazy for the Civil War’s Mothers of Invention.  In closing Faust suggests that questions remain about the connection between the liberating effects of the war, later organized movements toward property rights and suffrage, sympathetic attachment to the Lost Cause, and veneration of confederate veterans tantalizing young scholars with new avenues for research.  Faust’s work is especially important as a carefully-researched and skillfully-presented work with wide audience appeal. 

Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention:  Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War, Chapel Hill:  University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

            Mothers of Invention is a gender study by Drew Gilpin Faust that concerns Southern white women during the Civil War. Specifically, she is interested in how the slaveholding class responded when their men went off to war and their women were left to run the home front. The Civil War caused a violation of the separate spheres. Women, once confined to the private sphere, found themselves forced to run plantations, seek wage work, operate hospitals, and manage slaves without help. Faust argues that the war challenged gender roles and assumptions in the South, just as it challenged the racial hierarchy and patriarchal society.

            During the Civil War, about a half million white women belonged to the slaveholding families of the Confederacy. Before the war, they defined themselves in relation to the men as wives, mothers, or sisters. Their social structures revolved around a male world; plantations were simply too far apart to allow for women to socialize much with each other. They contributed to the plantation through indirect means; they rarely raised their own children, spun their own clothe, or involved themselves in the daily economic decisions. The war took their men and forced women into a more public role. Three out of every four Southern men served in the Confederate Army; the war directly affected a large percentage of the plantation mistresses. These women lived in a world defined by the peculiar institution. They understood their position in society as directly related to being both slaveholders and the moral compass of the South.

            Faust examines almost every facet of daily life for these women in an attempt to gauge how the war affected them. Women generally supported the war and they understood the reasons their husbands, sons, and brothers went to fight. Some women actively participated in the war effort by following their husbands’ army camps. Others worked as nurses, though this was frowned upon for the upper class. Though supposedly disinterested in the political or public realm, their letters are filled with nuanced understanding of the issues. Their support led them to assume more direct control of their slaves when the men left for war. Southern slavery was a social order dependent on the threat and often the application of physical violence. Women found themselves somewhat reluctant to deliver punishments and the slaves did not really take their threats seriously. To Faust, the South was obviously built on male dominance, so without white males the system ceases to work in the same way. Aside from direct supervision of their slaves, women now found themselves in direct supervision of their own children. As more and more slaves fled to Northern lines and freedom, the plantation women found themselves raising their own children and it proved a difficult task,. Several of the women wrote to their husbands that a reluctance to beat or discipline slaves did not translate into the same treatment of their children. Unmarried women realized that the war might mean fewer opportunities to marry; several expressed concerns about becoming spinsters. Those who were determined to marry after the war were encouraged to look upon wounded or amputated veterans with more favor than a whole man who did not serve. These women also faced new demands upon their own labor. Without men, and increasingly without slaves, these women often engaged in physical labor for the first time in their lives. They were forced to work to provide for their families, though most wrote about it with a sense of shame rather than empowerment.

            Faust’s work is one of the best examples of gender studies in the Civil War literature. She relies on personal documents, primarily letters. Though at times she attempts to force her conception of the public and the private onto the letters, in most instances her conclusions are understandable and valid. She makes a strong case in stating that the war disrupted the social order of the South just as much as it affected soldiers on the front lines.

Misty Mehrtens

Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention:  Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War, (Chapel Hill:  University of North Carolina Press, 1996), xi-257.

            In Mothers of Invention, Drew Gilpin Faust demonstrates how the Civil War changed the lives of Confederate women.  During the 19^th century, women were expected to remain in their homes and to care for their families.  When married men joined the war effort, Southern women were expected to perform tasks that were considered part of a man’s duty.  Women managed their households, and they claimed authority over their slaves and subordinates.  With the institution of the blockade, Confederate women began to make their own homemade goods.  Women spun their own cloth, sewed their own clothes and made wares for their husbands, children, and slaves.  The Civil War brought new opportunities for Southern women.  Many women ventured outside their homes to find work.  Women found work as teachers and as nurses.  Although diaries and the letters reveal that Confederate women yearned for their husbands’ presence, Faust argues that the Civil War allowed women to become less reliant on their husbands or on the labor of their slaves and allowed them the opportunity to become more self-sufficient (1-257). 

            During the 19^th century, society dictated that women must marry and have children.  Women were expected to remain in their homes, while their husbands were allowed to venture to the public sphere for work or for business.  Southern men served as the patriarchs of their households.  Their wives, children, and slaves were expected to pay them a high degree of deference.  Once Southern states seceded and Confederate men enlisted in the war, they left their wives to handle their plantations and farms.  Faust argues that for many wealthy plantation mistresses, the supervision of their plantations remained an intimidating task.  Faust notes that plantation mistresses worried that their slaves would enact forms of violence against them.  Many Confederate women believed that they did not possess the authority to command respect from their slaves. According to Faust, many white women expressed in their letters that “only the white man’s strength could provide [them] adequate and necessary protection. The very word protection was invoked again and again by Confederate women petitioning [their husbands] for what they believed [was] the fundamental right guaranteed them by the paternalistic social order of the South” (59).  As the Confederate economy began to dwindle, many female slaveholders found qualms with slavery.  According to Faust, “Few slaveowning women had seriously questioned the moral or political legitimacy of the system,” but many plantation mistresses noticed that their farms’ production yielded little revenue.  Other plantations were unable to provide for the basic needs of its inhabitants (53-79). 

            Besides running their farms and plantations, Faust shows how the Civil War further altered the lives of white women.  Because of the Union’s blockade, many imports were unable to enter the Confederacy.  Instead of buying readymade goods and fashions, many women sewed items for themselves and their families.  In many Confederate songs, Southerners praised women for spinning their own cloth and for hand sewing garments.  Yet according to Faust, “Even though Jefferson Davis celebrated [the production of] homespun [goods], many Southern men were deeply disturbed when they learned that their wives had taken up textile production” (47).  For these men, they feared that these forms of labor would render their women unfeminine, since ladies were never expected to struggle and toil (30-52). 

            Although 19^th century women were expected to remain in their homes, the Civil War allowed women the chance to perform work in the public sphere.  Faust notes that many women had to find work, in order to finance and to sustain their families’ survival.  Many Confederate women became teachers and nurses.  Other women worked for the government.  The Confederacy employed women to sew uniforms and to work in the Treasury Department.  Some Southern women made money by publishing their writings (80-257).  According to Faust, “Attributes traditionally regarded as female or ladylike—the very foundation of these women’s prewar identities—had to be abandoned as disabilities [during this time].  Delicacy and propriety had to be sacrificed, … sensibility hardened, and compassion contained within the bounds of pragmatism” (111).  The Civil War deeply altered the lives of Confederate women.  They had to run their farms and had to find ways to supplement their incomes.  Although Southern women were considered highly emotional and delicate, these females had to skirt the norms of their society in order to survive.  For those who want to understand the ways women and the home front were affected by the Civil War, scholars should look to Drew Gilpin Faust’s Mothers of Invention for the answers. 

Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War.  By Drew Gilpin Faust.  (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996.  Pp. xvi, 326).

In her thought-provoking and controversial study, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War, Drew Gilpin Faust explores how the Civil War changed the lives of elite plantation mistresses of the Deep South.  Drawing upon the letters and diaries of 500 Confederate women and a host of other primary sources, including contemporary literature, poems, songs, plays and government documents, Faust delicately weaves these women’s individual stories into the greater context of societal change during the war.  Faust claims that these women’s lives were altered drastically as they faced new challenges that frequently distorted traditional Southern values of womanhood, often instilling in these elite women a realization of their own uselessness.  As young Lucy Buck noted in 1862, “We shall never any of us be the same as we have been” (p. 3).

Faust logically begins her book with Southern elite women’s reactions to the secession crisis, noting that the onset of the war and departure of Southern men to the battlefield left behind an essentially female society in which women were forced to assume roles they had never before filled.  Women found themselves torn between patriotism and a psychological need for protection, and after their men left for the fields, women bound themselves together to contribute to the war effort by sewing, knitting, and raising money, among other things.  As Union troops began invading the South, many wealthy women became refugees, a term that in the context of the Civil War implies a wealthy individual, often a woman, who willingly fled her home to preserve her property, often slaves.  The ravages of war also plunged many a planter’s wife and family into poverty, prompting Ms. Sidney Harding to proclaim, “I used to think I would like to be poor but having never seen any poor people before I did not know what it was.  Have no such wish now” (p. 42).  Many of these women found themselves with the responsibility of tending to the family’s slaves—whether there be one, two, or twenty of them.  In this realm, women especially realized their weakness and helplessness, as they inherited a master-slave relationship that so often impended on violence and physical dominance, something that the average petite Southern belle used rarely if ever in antebellum times.  Additionally, as the war droned on and slaves began to run away in increasing numbers, many elite white plantation mistresses discovered their own ineptitude in basic household tasks.  Many had trouble managing their own children, cooking, cleaning, and even dressing themselves without the assistance of slave labor.  Some more adventurous and independent-minded women (mostly young) took up occupations in teaching, nursing or tailoring, among other professions, though many looked down upon this intrusion into the male public sphere.

As to be expected, women missed their soldiers dearly.  Alarmed by the quickly diminishing number of eligible Southern bachelors, single women did their best to find a mate; though precarious was the hope that he would survive the war actually to begin the marriage.  Often women found solace in the written word, as many turned to contemporary novels, traditional literature, and poems and plays to pass the days.  Included in many women’s literary repertoire was the Bible, to which they turned for eternal guidance and hope that this terrible conflict would end swiftly.  When it came to greeting invading Yankees, many young southern women turned to downright nastiness to express their hatred, and Faust provides plenty examples of saucy women and their often uncouth exploits.  As they faced one wartime humiliation after another, the author argues that these women grew to embrace their own assertiveness and to abandon their former patriotism, wishing only for the war to end and the return of their loved one.

While Faust has been criticized for resting her analysis solely on the elite strata of society, readers are reminded that it is the upper class that the author set out to research because of the abundance of written artifacts they left behind.  Had Faust promised a study of the entire female population of the slaveholding south—including white, free black, slave, poor, rich, urban, and rural—readers would have true cause for disappointment in the book’s coverage.  While she does in her epilogue refer to her sample as merely “white women,” rather than elite white women, one could argue that after the Civil War the term “elite” as it had been applied in the antebellum era no longer existed.  Faust has also received criticism for failing to cover the post-war era in her analysis—but again; Faust does not promise to do so.  The author attains the goals she sets forth in her premise, and does so in a well supported and documented, logical manner.  Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War serves to fill a gap in Civil War, as well as to provoke further research in the field of women’s history.  Those interested in both fields will find Faust’s able study a valuable addition to their personal libraries.

Ashley Laumen

Texas Christian University