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.

"This is a collection of biographies and composite essays of Texas women, contextualized over the course of history to include subjects that reflect the enormous racial, class, and religious diversity of the state. Offering insights into the complex ways that Texas' position on the margins of the United States has shaped a particular kind of gendered experience there, the volume also demonstrates how the larger questions in United States women's history are answered or reconceived in the state. Beginning with Juliana Barr's essay, which asserts that 'women marked the lines of dominion among Spanish and Indian nations in Texas' and explodes the myth of Spanish domination in colonial Texas, the essays examine the ways that women were able to use their borderland status to stretch the boundaries of their own lives. Eric Walther demonstrates that the constant changing of governments in Texas (Spanish, Mexican, Texan, and U.S.) gave slaves the opportunities to resist their oppression because of the differences in the laws of slavery under Spanish or English or American law. Gabriela Gonzalez examines the activism of Jovita Idar on behalf of civil rights for Mexicans and Mexican Americans on both sides of the border. Renee Laegreid argues that female rodeo contestants employed a "unique regional interplay of masculine and feminine behaviors" to shape their identities as cowgirls"--

"Women in Civil War Texas is the first book dedicated to the unique experiences of Texas women during this time. It connects Texas women's lives to southern women's history and shares the diversity of experiences of women in Texas during the Civil War. Contributors explore Texas women and their vocal support for secession, coping with their husbands' wartime absences, the importance of letter-writing, 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"--Publisher's website.

During six months in 1862, William Jefferson Whatley and his wife, Nancy Falkaday Watkins Whatley, exchanged a series of letters that vividly demonstrate the quickly changing roles of women whose husbands left home to fight in the Civil War. When William Whatley enlisted with the Confederate Army in 1862, he left his young wife Nancy in charge of their cotton farm in East Texas, near the village of Caledonia in Rusk County. In letters to her husband, Nancy describes in elaborate detail how she dealt with and felt about her new role, which thrust her into an array of unfamiliar duties, including dealing with increasingly unruly slaves, overseeing the harvest of the cotton crop, and negotiating business transactions with unscrupulous neighbors. At the same time, she carried on her traditional family duties and tended to their four young children during frequent epidemics of measles and diphtheria. Stationed hundreds of miles away, her husband could only offer her advice, sympathy, and shared frustration. In An East Texas Family’s Civil War, the Whatleys’ great-grandson, John T. Whatley, transcribes and annotates these letters for the first time. Notable for their descriptions of the unraveling of the local slave labor system and accounts of rural southern life, Nancy’s letters offer a rare window on the hardships faced by women on the home front taking on unprecedented responsibilities and filling unfamiliar roles.

On February 1, 1861, delegates at the Texas Secession Convention elected to leave the Union. The people of Texas supported the actions of the convention in a statewide referendum, paving the way for the state to secede and to officially become the seventh state in the Confederacy. Soon the Texans found themselves engaged in a bloody and prolonged civil war against their northern brethren. During the curse of this war, the lives of thousands of Texans, both young and old, were changed forever. This new anthology, edited by Kenneth W. Howell, incorporates the latest scholarly research on how Texans experienced the war. Eighteen contributors take us from the battlefront to the home front, ranging from inside the walls of a Confederate prison to inside the homes of women and children left to fend for themselves while their husbands and fathers were away on distant battlefields, and from the halls of the governor’s mansion to the halls of the county commissioner’s court in Colorado County. Also explored are well-known battles that took place in or near Texas, such as the Battle of Galveston, the Battle of Nueces, the Battle of Sabine Pass, and the Red River Campaign. Finally, the social and cultural aspects of the war receive new analysis, including the experiences of women, African Americans, Union prisoners of war, and noncombatants.

Traces the history of Texas during the Civil War from the passage of the secession ordinance in Austin through the battle of Palmito Ranch, and includes information about Texas sites associated with the war.

Winner, 2019 Liz Carpenter Award, sponsored by the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA) In recent decades, a small but growing number of historians have dedicated their tireless attention to analyzing the role of women in Texas history. Each contribution—and there have been many—represents a brick in the wall of new Texas history. From early Native societies to astronauts, Women in Texas History assembles those bricks into a carefully crafted structure as the first book to cover the full scope of Texas women’s history. By emphasizing the differences between race and ethnicity, Angela Boswell uses three broad themes to tie together the narrative of women in Texas history. First, the physical and geographic challenges of Texas as a place significantly affected women’s lives, from the struggles of isolated frontier farming to the opportunities and problems of increased urbanization. Second, the changing landscape of legal and political power continued to shape women’s lives and opportunities, from the ballot box to the courthouse and beyond. Finally, Boswell demonstrates the powerful influence of social and cultural forces on the identity, agency, and everyday life of women in Texas. In challenging male-dominated legal and political systems, Texan women shaped (and were shaped by) class, religion, community organizations, literary and artistic endeavors, and more. Women in Texas History is the first book to narrate the entire span of Texas women’s history and marks a major achievement in telling the full story of the Lone Star State. Historians and general readers alike will find this book an informative and enjoyable read for anyone interested in the history of Texas or the history of women.