As the war continued, and the vast confederate army swallowed up food and resources, women - in particular low income woman - petitioned, protested, and then took to the streets in coordinated riots that broke into food stores and threatened the lives of officials. Yet while Union sympathisers could be treated as traitors, the wives and widows of confederate soldiers could not be violently rejected from the life of the state. No matter how bravely confederate men and boys fought, no matter how many battles they won, the truth was that the nation they fought for was built on a foundation of sand and dustįrom the very beginning the new state had to counter the activities of the pro Union part of its populace, with threats and intimidation that eventually escalated to torture (of nursing mothers as well as men) and summary executions. Yet from the very start, as McCurry documents, it was clear that the dreams of the planter class were only that, dreams. Women would remain compliant and demure, the enslaved would happily provide the labour needed to support the war effort. As these free white men prepared their new nation for war, many truly believed that the virtues they espoused provided a solid and unbeatable formula for victory.
In populist imagination – then and now - the CSA was a nation created by a consensus of free white men who, noble in thought and deed, were chivalrous to women and treated the enslaved with Christian respect. In her book Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South, Stephanie McCurry uses petitions, letters, diaries, pamphlets, documents of local, state and federal debates and legislation, newspaper reports and court proceedings, to create a vivid account of lives, conflicts and aspirations in the Slave Nation. Sadly much of that ordeal has been omitted from history or transformed into a highly selective mythos that bolsters white nationalism, while reducing many southern individuals and communities to cartoon figures. The populace of Confederate States of America in particular witnessed great trauma during those four years of brutal conflict.
Suffering, privation and death were not limited to the battlefields of the American Civil War. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2010. Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South, by Stephanie McCurry.
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