"A stunning portrayal of a tragedy endured and survived by women." --David W. Blight, author of Frederick Douglass "Readers expecting hoop-skirted ladies soothing fevered soldiers' brows will not find them here...It explodes the fiction that men fight wars while women idle on the sidelines." --Washington Post "As McCurry points out in this gem of a book, many historians who view the American Civil War as a 'people's war' nevertheless neglect the actions of half the people." --James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom "In this brilliant exposition of the politics of the seemingly personal, McCurry illuminates previously unrecognized dimensions of the war's elemental impact." --Drew Gilpin Faust, author of This Republic of Suffering The idea that women are outside of war is a powerful myth in western culture, one that shaped the Civil War and still determines how we write about it today. Through three dramatic stories that span the course of the war, this groundbreaking reconsideration invites us to see America's bloodiest conflict for what it was: not just a brothers' war but a women's war. When Union soldiers faced the unexpected threat of female partisans, saboteurs, and spies, long held assumptions about the innocence of enemy women were suddenly thrown into question. Stephanie McCurry shows how the case of Clara Judd, imprisoned for treason, transformed the writing of Lieber's Code, leading to lasting changes in the laws of war. Black women's fight for freedom had no place in the Union military's emancipation plans. Facing a massive problem of governance as former slaves fled to their ranks, officers re-classified black women as "soldiers' wives"--whether or not they were married--placing new obstacles on their path to freedom. Finally, Women's War offers a new perspective on the epic human drama of Reconstruction through the story of one slaveholding woman, Gertrude Thomas, whose losses went well beyond the material to intimate matters of family, love, and belonging. Thomas's response mixed grief with rage, recasting white supremacy in new, still relevant, terms.

Popular images of women during the American Civil War include self-sacrificing nurses, romantic spies, and brave ladies maintaining hearth and home in the absence of their men. However, as DeAnne Blanton and Lauren M. Cook show in their remarkable new study, that conventional picture does not tell the entire story. Hundreds of women assumed male aliases, disguised themselves in men’s uniforms, and charged into battle as Union and Confederate soldiers—facing down not only the guns of the adversary but also the gender prejudices of society. They Fought Like Demons is the first book to fully explore and explain these women, their experiences as combatants, and the controversial issues surrounding their military service. Relying on more than a decade of research in primary sources, Blanton and Cook document over 240 women in uniform and find that their reasons for fighting mirrored those of men—-patriotism, honor, heritage, and a desire for excitement. Some enlisted to remain with husbands or brothers, while others had dressed as men before the war. Some so enjoyed being freed from traditional women’s roles that they continued their masquerade well after 1865. The authors describe how Yankee and Rebel women soldiers eluded detection, some for many years, and even merited promotion. Their comrades often did not discover the deception until the “young boy” in their company was wounded, killed, or gave birth. In addition to examining the details of everyday military life and the harsh challenges of -warfare for these women—which included injury, capture, and imprisonment—Blanton and Cook discuss the female warrior as an icon in nineteenth-century popular culture and why twentieth-century historians and society ignored women soldiers’ contributions. Shattering the negative assumptions long held about Civil War distaff soldiers, this sophisticated and dynamic work sheds much-needed light on an unusual and overlooked facet of the Civil War experience.

Given by the Madeley Estate.

Women in Civil War Texas is the first book dedicated to the unique experiences of Texas women during the Civil War. It fills the literary void in Texas women’s history during this time, connects Texas women’s lives to southern women’s history, and shares the diversity of experiences of women in Texas during the Civil War. An introductory essay situates the anthology within both Civil War and Texas women’s history. Contributors explore Texas women and their vocal support for secession and in support of a war, coping with their husbands’ wartime absences, the importance of letter-writing as a means of connecting families, and how pro-Union sentiment caused serious difficulties for women. They also analyze the effects of ethnicity, focusing on African American, German, and Tejana women’s experiences. Finally, two essays examine the problem of refugee women in east Texas and the dangers facing western frontier women. These essays develop the historical understanding of what it meant to be a Texas woman during the Civil War and also contribute to a deeper understanding of the complexity of the war and its effects.

As many as 20,000 women worked in Union and Confederate hospitals during America's bloodiest war. Black and white, and from various social classes, these women served as nurses, administrators, matrons, seamstresses, cooks, laundresses, and custodial workers. Jane E. Schultz provides the first full history of these female relief workers, showing how the domestic and military arenas merged in Civil War America, blurring the line between homefront and battlefront. Schultz uses government records, private manuscripts, and published sources by and about women hospital workers, some of whom are familiar--such as Dorothea Dix, Clara Barton, Louisa May Alcott, and Sojourner Truth--but most of whom are not well-known. Examining the lives and legacies of these women, Schultz considers who they were, how they became involved in wartime hospital work, how they adjusted to it, and how they challenged it. She demonstrates that class, race, and gender roles linked female workers with soldiers, both black and white, but became sites of conflict between the women and doctors and even among themselves. Schultz also explores the women's postwar lives--their professional and domestic choices, their pursuit of pensions, and their memorials to the war in published narratives. Surprisingly few parlayed their war experience into postwar medical work, and their extremely varied postwar experiences, Schultz argues, defy any simple narrative of pre-professionalism, triumphalism, or conciliation.

Drawing on a wealth of regimental histories, newspaper archives, and a host of previously unreported accounts, Hall shows that women served in more capacities and in greater number-perhaps several thousand-than has previously been known. They served in the infantry, cavalry, and artillery and as spies, scouts, saboteurs, smugglers, and frontline nurses. From all walks of life, they followed husbands and lovers into battle, often in male disguise that remained undiscovered until they were wounded (or gave birth), and endured the same hardships and dangers as did their male counterparts.

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.