Civil Wars

Civil Wars: Women and the Crisis of Southern Nationalism. By George C. Rable. Women in American History. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989. Pp. xvi, 391).

When George Rable published Civil Wars in 1989, the study of women during the Civil War, like the study of women’s history generally, was a relatively new and developing field. Already there had been some important observations made about the lives of nineteenth-century women by scholars including Anne Frior Scott and Bell Wiley. Rable made a notable contribution with his book, and challenged some of the initial conclusions made by historians of women’s history. Rable argues that southern women were much more complicit in the social order and value system of the Old South and Confederacy. Even though most women upheld rather than challenged the social order of the South, Rable also proves that they adhered to a variety of opinions about themselves and their society both during the war and in the postbellum period. Rable departs from previous assessments of the long-term implications of the war on women’s lives by asserting that the war failed to produce revolutionary social changes for women. Civil Wars relies on an impressive number of literary sources such as letters and diaries that—although creating a elitist bias—reveal how women perceived themselves and the world around them. Although his study does not include women of color, Rable does compare and contrast white women of different regional and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Rable arranges his book into chronological and topical chapters. He begins with an examination of southern women in the antebellum period. Women, he asserts “collaborated with men” to maintain their subordinate position in southern society (2). Although the domestic sphere was the main area for women’s activities, the antebellum period was a time of increasing opportunities for women outside of the home in terms of rights, education, and volunteerism. Because women were prominent in the domestic sphere, they were a significant part of the slaveholding culture. Rable opines that many women did not just “acquiesce in and benefit from slavery,” but were adamant defenders of the institution. Although they were generally more compassionate towards slaves then men, Rable points out that they could still be cruel and some were even harsher masters than men.

The heart of the book explores the activities of women during the Civil War and analyzes their thoughts about the development of the war. Women of the Confederacy faced numerous psychological and physical threats and challenges, and they coped with changes in a variety of ways. Rable’s examination of women’s wartime experiences covers a range of topics including their (waxing and waning) allegiance to the Confederate cause, their attitudes towards men leaving for war, the reversal of gender roles, leisure activities, women’s attitudes towards invasion and being forced from their homes, and their feelings about defeat. Rable’s analysis reveals that women were an active and integral part of the southern economy during the war and were also a part of the political culture of the time because they held opinions about and commented on important issues like slavery and the Confederate cause (even if they did not have the right to vote). Rable also explores the development of propaganda that idealized the image of southern white women as dedicated patriots and homefront stalwarts.

Rable extends his study through the Reconstruction period. Most southerners, he contends, saw the changing roles of women during the war as an aberration. During the postbellum period, women returned to the activities and positions that they held before war. Although they faced disillusionment and poverty in the aftermath of war, women remained loyal to their class and race (288). In an interesting concluding chapter, “The Janus-Faced Women of the New South,” Rable discusses the enduring patriarchal system of the South and how southern women remained largely untouched by the growing organized feminist movement in the North.

Civil Wars proves that southern women “were not simply victims or innocent bystanders to” the Civil War (48). The strength of Rable’s book is his evaluation of the diversity of women’s experiences and responses to war. Like soldiers and other men of the time, women were not a homogenous group. In his assessment of the enduring legacies of the war on southern women’s lives, Rable is in agreement with scholars such as Suzanne Lebsock, who argue that the war did little to change the status of women in southern society. However, as Lebsock also suggests, the lack of on organized feminist movement in the South following the war did not mean that women did not reevaluate their position or place in society or achieve any degree of social progress. Likewise, Rable shows that the experience of war, particularly in the additional responsibility of running the home and aiding in the war cause, created enduring changes in the lives of southern women.

Jensen Branscombe Texas Christian University

Civil Wars: Women and the Crisis of Southern Nationalism. By George C. Rable. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989.

George C. Rable’s Civil Wars: Women and the Crisis of Southern Nationalism approaches the field of the history of women in the South during the Civil War differently then the previous authors who have addressed the subject. Rable, a professor of Southern history at the University of Alabama, uses the jargon and language of women’s history to address head-on the prevailing doctrines that argue that a class and social revolution took place among Southern women during the Civil War. Rable fully understood the societal and cultural disruptions which took place on the Southern home front, but argued that Ante-Bellum society continued on for many women across the established patterns.

The Civil War had two distinct areas of primary focus for the Confederacy: The attempt to hold off military defeat and salvage the Old South, and the home front, wherein the battle focused on the need to maintain morale sufficient to bring troops and supplies to support the military effort, as well as maintain the overall support for the Davis government. Southern women initially strongly supported the war, believing, much like the men, that the war would be quickly won and the boys and men would be home for the harvest. As time went on, the economic turmoil caused by the absence of men in many Southern communities led to severe hardships for many women. These women began to petition for the return of their sons, husbands, and overseers, citing most often financial hardship as the reason for the desired discharged. These continued difficulties led the various women cited by Rable to question the overall cause of Southern liberty.

The women had been accustomed to the established protections of Southern society. Women had security and held places of honor in the society. The society had established places for one and all, with the circle of contact for most women being within kinship groups and the extremely local community. They had little opportunity to become financially independent, to which the acquiesced in return for the protection of society. Their lives focused on marriage and children, even for those women who took an active role in managing their finances and estates. With war, the society and cultural norms temporarily broke down. Courtships rapidly led to marriage, with the specter of death ever prevalent. Economic and cultural security decayed with the pressures of the Civil War.

The role of slavery in white Southern society persists throughout the narrative. Slavery allowed even the poor white women to feel superior to someone. Moreover, women entered the role of overseer in many Southern plantations, sometimes without any white men for miles around. As such, the Southern white woman became directly involved in the racist institution. Rable, in an unsupported, throw-away comment, compares white Southern women to Nazi women who strongly supported the Nazi state. Unfortunately, Rable presents no basis to establish the comment.

Rable’s work generally focused on the literate upper class, with diaries and letters as the predominate source of information. As such, the work feels that it truly only represents a limited view of the changes which took place during the Civil War for Southern Women. He largely ignored black women and presents evidence regarding the illiterate lower classes only rarely, and even then there is a severe question whether their voice is truly reflected in the petitions for discharge. Given the nature of government and legal documents, it is more than likely that the women cited in that instance, many of whom could not even sign their names, prepared and dictated the language of the petitions. While he attempted to show the nature of life for poor Southern white women before, during, and after the Civil War, this section appears the most forced.

Overall, while the work presents some very interesting information regarding the trauma that women faced during the Civil War, at times it feels rather focused on his theories with evidence that is largely anecdotal. While he has reviewed numerous archives in his research, much of his evidence is based on a mere handful of women, including Mary Chesnut. It does not reach its goal of fully presenting an understanding of societal change for white women in the South during the Civil War, but it does present an impressive structure and theory, succeeding in casting doubt regarding previous theories of societal revolution.

Civil Wars: Women and the Crisis of Southern Nationalism. By George C. Rable. (Women in American History Series.) Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989. Pp. xv, 391.

In Civil Wars: Women and the Crisis of Southern Nationalism, George C. Rable, professor of Southern history at the University of Alabama, takes issue with Mary Elizabeth Massey’s allegation that the Civil War instigated a social revolution among Northern and Southern women. While he agrees with Massey’s argument that the period between 1860 and 1865 did indeed offer women of the South new roles and some limited opportunities, no significant revolution based gender roles occurred. Most deserving of both the Jefferson Davis Award and the Julia Cherry Spruill Prize, Rable’s book is first full-length study of Southern women since Bell Wiley’s Confederate Women published in 1975.

Rable presents the Civil War as somewhat of a two-front war: first and foremost, the military side of the Civil War determined the path, course, and final outcome of the Confederacy’s experiment in secession. Yet, the home front, the other front in the war, strongly effected the motivation of Confederate soldiers’, the ability of the Davis administration to govern, and the lifespan of the Confederate cause to continue. In 1860, most Southern women proudly supported Confederate nationalism as they clung to familiar customs mostly because they had never seriously questioned their own culture. “Not only did they acquiesce in and benefit from slavery, but they also stood ready to defend it from outside attack” (32). As the war progressed, however, women slowly lost their verve to enable the Confederacy as they no longer received their end of the Southern lifestyle—security, protection, and a stable standard of living. Southern domestic ideology taught Southern women that their gendered submission would be repaid with a comfortable and predictable life provided by Southern gentlemen. Without male protection and security due to the Civil War, women increasingly felt little desire to support a conflict that slowly eroded their end of the Southern bargain.

The author begins his study with a brief narrative of women’s lives in the antebellum South and clearly illustrates the paternalistic nature of Southern society. Through his discussions of Southern tradition, ideas of womanhood, and honor as it pertained to women, a picture of the gender, racial, and socioeconomic hierarchy becomes clear. Not only did Southern society have clear-cut boundaries and expectations for its men and women, such categories broke down further into class-based and racially-based classifications with increasingly stringent unwritten rules and regulations for its members. As the Civil War progressed, the conflict threatened to erase a traditional culture in the South. For the moment, the Southern class conflict was subdued by the race issue as women fought to retain their traditional lifestyles. As the war continued, however, this process shifted to women’s futile efforts to regain a passing era.

Rable reveals the dramatic changes that the Civil War brought to the lives of women in the South. Prior to the outbreak of war, women’s lives revolved around the acquisition of a husband, rearing of numerous children, maintenance of the household and domestic slaves, and attempts to secure certain levels of comfort and protection based on their placement in the Southern social pecking order. The nature of the Civil War changed all of this. In the absence of men, Southern women managed farms and plantations and took on traditional male duties. Traditional Southern practices of courting, engagement, and marriage became increasingly difficult as more men went to war as fewer and fewer returned home. As Southern expectations of duty and honor for men dictated courageous service in the war, the same guidelines for Southern women prescribed a silent, stoic suffering as their men fought the war. At the beginning of the war, women proudly sent their husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons off to war to defend the Confederacy and the Southern way of life. As early as 1862, women suffered an increasingly difficult burden as the war persisted. The deteriorating economy, unruly slaves, and the presence of Yankees in southern states, shifted women’s support away from defending the homeland to a demand for men to return home to defend their own homes.

While Rable has received some criticism for not including black women in his study, he states in the preface that he originally intended to do so. As the manuscript developed, however, he discovered that such a combination would result in a massive final product. He also explains that his research into black women’s activities during the Civil War deserves its own focused text. In the end, the author’s study reveals the tensions and divisions between white women based on class. He skillfully demonstrates the united front such women provided against the foreseeable change in the racial hierarchy. Well-researched and well-written, this study illuminates the complexities for Southern women on the home front as the Civil War raged on the battlefield. This work represents the most thorough survey of white Southern women’s experiences during the Civil War.