Women's war : fighting and surviving the American Civil War / Stephanie McCurry.
The Civil War is remembered as a war of brother against brother, with women standing innocently on the sidelines. But battlefield realities soon challenged this simplistic understanding of women's place in war. Stephanie McCurry shows that women were indispensable to the unfolding of the Civil War, as they have been--and continue to be--in all wars. With a trio of dramatic stories, McCurry explores unique facets of women's wartime experiences, each one of which played an important part in redefining the meaning and stakes of the Civil War. Clara Judd, a female spy who was imprisoned by the Union for treason, sparked a heated controversy over the principle of civilian immunity, leading to lasting changes in the international laws of war. The hundreds of thousands of enslaved women who escaped to Union lines during the conflict upended military emancipation policies aimed only at enslaved male soldiers. Union leaders responded by casting fugitive black women as "soldiers' wives," offering them a protection of sorts but placing a lasting obstacle on their path to freedom. In the war's aftermath, the former Confederate Gertrude Thomas wrestled with her loss of status amid economic devastation, social collapse, and the new freedom of her former slaves. War and emancipation touched even her intimate family, revealing the full extent of the break in history Reconstruction represented.-- Provided by publisher.
Record details
- ISBN: 9780674239920 (e-book)
- Physical Description: 1 online resource (321 pages)
- Publisher: Cambridge, Massachusetts ; The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019.
Content descriptions
Bibliography, etc. Note: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Formatted Contents Note: | Enemy women and the laws of war -- The story of the black soldier's wife -- Reconstructing a life amidst the ruins. |
Source of Description Note: | Description based on print version record. |
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Women's War : Fighting and Surviving the American Civil War
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Women's War : Fighting and Surviving the American Civil War
Winner of the PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Award "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...Explodes the fiction that men fight wars while women idle on the sidelines." -- Washington Post The idea that women are outside of war is a powerful myth, one that shaped the Civil War and still determines how we write about it today. Through three dramatic stories that span the war, Stephanie McCurry 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. 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 reclassified black women as "soldiers' wives"--placing new obstacles on their path to freedom. Finally, McCurry offers a new perspective on the epic human drama of Reconstruction through the story of one slaveholding woman, whose losses went well beyond the material to intimate matters of family, love, and belonging, mixing grief with rage and recasting white supremacy in new, still relevant terms. "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