Tag Archives: Women and the Civil War

Civil War Women at Laurel Hill by Alisha Rivera

Posted on by
Reply

LHCWSome of the greatest places to find the history of women is through its cemeteries, which was my goal this Women’s History month when I went to the Laurel Hill Cemetery to get a better understanding of female participation during the Civil War. The event was called Legendary Civil War Ladies: A One Book, One Philadelphia Event. The One Book, One Philadelphia Event is an event created by the Free Library of Philadelphia where a group of people read a selected work and use Philadelphia as a way to explore it further. This month’s book was Cold Mountain and so it fit perfectly with this event. The Legendary Civil War Ladies is a project that attempted to give eleven women, all of whom participated in the Civil War and are currently buried at Laurel Hill, a story. Focusing on one of the women mentioned in the event, I plan to show how this event worked and how it failed.

The article “The Feminized Civil War” written by Alice Fahs, discusses how women often participated in the Civil War by making the home their battle ground. Female domestic participation in the war was seen as important as male participation in combat (Fahs 1464). However, their participation in the war was only held within their domestic sphere. Martha Coston, one of the women buried in Laurel Hill, participated in the Civil War outside of the sphere set for her.

According to Kerry Bryan, the guide at Laurel Hill, Coston was the wife of an inventor who unfortunately died prematurely leaving her alone with four children. One day, as she was shifting through his things she found some rough plans for a signal flair for ships. His design did not work, but she was able to work on her version for ten years. The finished product became a crucial asset for the navy during the Civil War. Still, with all her accomplishments she did not really gain the recognition she deserved.

According to an article written by Deborah Merritt called “Hypatia in the Patent Office: Women Inventors and the Law, 1865-1900”, women were often tricked by men in the commerce business to either hand over their patents to a man or, if they wanted to fight, hire a male lawyer that also took advantage of them (Merritt 252). Most women inventors at this time did not receive support from male inventors and they often did not receive full payment for their inventions. Merritt even states that “Coston believed that her gender prevented her from obtaining a fair price from governments who purchased her flares” (Merritt 300). While Coston was one of the most interesting women we learn about during the event, we ended up only spending about ten minutes on her.

The event was originally intended to be an outside one where we were supposed to take a tour of the cemetery to see each gravesite for each of the women being discussed. However, it was a cold day and so they moved everything into a cramped room. Bryan was dressed up as Mrs. Elizabeth Hutter, one of the Civil War Ladies, and she gave the tour in the form of a PowerPoint presentation. She did her best to make it feel like we were transported into history, but it did not go smoothly because she read everything out of a binder.

Because of the presentation form, each woman was only given about ten minutes of spotlight time. This was not enough time for every lady because it created watered down versions of each woman’s story. It would have been better if they choose only four or five women to talk about. That way they can give a deep analysis of each woman. In the case of Coston, it would have been interesting to see an original patent for the signal flair or be able to see an original signal flair. Primary evidence would have made the experience a little more interesting.

In addition to this, I feel like the indoor alternative should have been more interactive. People came to the event expecting to roam around the grounds. Instead they had to sit in a small room for an hour and a half. Perhaps they could have had displays set up around the building were people could walk around and spend time with each lady at their own pace. Still, despite the slight letdown of the event, what little information they did present for each woman turned out to be pretty solid. The fact that they created a research project solely based on examining the women in the cemetery gives me hope that other places will soon want to do the same.

Works Cited

Bryan, Kerry. “Legendary Civil War Ladies”. Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia. 3 Mar. 2016. Tour.

Fahs, Alice. “The Feminized Civil War: Gender, Northern Popular Literature, and the Memory of the War, 1861-1900”. The Journal of American History 85.4 (1999): 1461–1494. Web.

Merritt, Deborah J. “Hypatia in the Patent Office: Women Inventors and the Law, 1865-1900”. The American Journal of Legal History 35.3 (1991): 235–306. Web.

 

“The Feminized Civil War: Gender, Northern Popular Literature, and the Memory of the War, 1861-1900” by Alice Fahs (Critic)

Posted on by
Reply

Alice Fahs’ “The Feminized Civil War: Gender, Northern Popular Literature, and the Memory of the War., 1861-1900” begins by illuminating how literature and popular culture were more inclusive towards women during the Civil War period. She analyzes this “feminization of the Civil War,” focusing mainly on northern women and their portrayal through literature. Yet, later in the paper, she also follows up postwar when popular views and understandings of the Civil War shifted towards a focus on white men and their place within the Civil War, leaving northern white women almost completely shutout. As I was reading “The Feminized War,” there were some slight issues that I came across.

Fahs begins the paper with a focus on northern women and how popular culture during the time of the Civil War allows for analysis and reflection for how women were viewed during this period. Although she begins to differentiate between the type of woman she is focusing on— by stating that this woman is “white” or that she is “northern,” she does not seem to differentiate between the type of women that are spoken of in terms of their economic place in society. For example, when she writes of the women who must find work after the death of their husbands, would we say the same for women of the lower classes who had no choice but to work outside the home from the very beginning? The use of the term “women” brings to mind inclusivity, but referring to women, when one appears to be speaking of only a certain category of women, can be better understood through added clarity. As I read Fahs’ paper, I felt that more clarity would have strengthened this section.

Within the paper, Fahs makes use of literature during the time of the Civil War in order to better explain how women were portrayed in popular culture. One specific ballad mentioned in the paper is that of John Greenleaf Whittier’s “Barbara Frietchie” (1467). The ballad focuses on the story of a woman who “defied Stonewall Jackson” (1467). But as I looked over the footnote, Fahs explains how Whittier “initially steadfastly asserted the veracity of the story upon which his ballad was based, but after the war he backpedaled” (1467). I feel that more explanation of this example would have strengthened the paper, especially when Fahs writes about the changes in women’s representation in various forms of literature after the war had ended.

Alice Fahs’ “The Feminized Civil War” provides the reader with a better understanding of how Civil War literature and popular culture in particular both helped to “feminize the Civil War” and to—postwar—brush over the memory of women and their place within society during the war. While my view that clarity in certain areas could help to strengthen the paper and to also answer possible questions left unanswered, Fahs’ paper continues to shed light on an important topic that many scholars have chosen to ignore.

– Pamela Ann Kelly

The Feminized Civil War: Gender, Northern Popular Literature, and the Memory of War, 1861-1900 by Alice Fahs

Posted on by
Reply

“The Feminized Civil War: Gender, Northern Popular Literature, and the Memory of War, 1861-1900” by Alice Fahs

This enlightening article highlights the role of women and gender as presented through Northern literature during and after the Civil War. Alice Fahs begins with the traditional narrative that women had no place in war and knew nothing about it. An anonymous woman who wrote to a Union paper believed otherwise. According to Fahs, women were actively involved in “wartime concerns.” Fahs discusses the importance of feminized literature that stressed “the importance of women’s contributions to the war effort, but increasingly it argued that women’s homefront suffering were equal to, or even greater than, those of men in battle” (Fahs 1462).

An important part of the wartime effort, the female side of the war was presented through “stories, essays, poems, articles, novels, broadsides, and cartoons” (Fahs 1462). This provided women with an active role in the Civil War narrative. Harper’s Weekly, one of the most popular Civil War era magazines, and continuing into the twentieth century, featured over sixty percent feminized stories from 1862-1864 (1463).

I found Fahs’s mention that in the years following the Civil War, the strong female presence and perspective seen during the war dissipated, as the “memory” and narrative of the war story shifted to the male perspective to be one of the most interesting parts of the article, and is something that I had not previously thought of. Now knowing the significant body of work published about women in the war effort is an important part of the Civil War that disappeared from American minds in the late nineteenth century. Fahs says that it then began to be “increasingly redefined as a man’s only war” (1464).

The author makes a strong connection between women supporting men enlisting in the war and the idea of “revolutionary mothers”, recalling the iconography of Betsy Ross and the few other colonial women referenced in popular culture (1465). This interesting analysis makes a strong case for the romanticism of a woman’s “duty” to husband, brother, family, and country. Popular songs and poems were created and widely distributed, all using women’s perspectives, all for the cause. One example is the story of Barbara Frietchie who heroically asks that Confederate soldiers kill her before they harm the Union flag (1469). Though many were supportive of the war effort (in the North), women’s emotions are an integral part of feminized literature. “In feminized war literature women’s emotions, especially their tears, were often portrayed as giving appropriate value to men’s actions” (1466). While it is not mentioned directly, this might be an interesting piece of propaganda to support the war effort.

A very different feminized narrative of the Civil War is war romances, which appeared plentiful in number in numerous publications. At the same time, loss and suffering play a key role in the Civil War with the staggering numbers of deaths and casualties. Winslow Homer’s words push the notion of “women’s words—represented as deeper than those of men—were at the emotional center of the nation” (1476).

The demise of the legacy of feminized literature during the Civil War came about during a change in tone with as Fahs says, “the rise of literary fiction”, therefore these perhaps exaggerated and outdone stories were laughed out of popularity by a more masculine aesthetic of realism, “explicitly disavowing earlier sentimental and domestic norms” (1489).

It is important to note that this article focuses on the northern women’s perspective on the war, and does not largely consider the perspectives of southern white women or slaves. Additionally, Fahs does not go in great depth into what women’s stories of the war. I would’ve liked to see a few more examples.  Despite this, I am the advocate for this essay, and I do believe that Alice Fahs examination into feminized literature of the Civil War to be thorough and thoughtful. It provides an interesting context to a heavily studied era in American History, although other than the origins of modern medicine—and the assistance of female nurses, and the southern belle narrative of Gone With the Wind. The former is getting more attention with a new PBS show Mercy Street. Putting that aside, the role of women, near the battlefield, and at home, had a tremendous impact on the Civil War through popular literature at the time, a lens, and the significance of it that has been all but forgotten in the collective American memory, Alice Fahs does a fantastic job of bringing it back to life.

– William Kowalik