Women's War: Fighting and Surviving the American Civil War

by Stephanie McCurry

Overview

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

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674251403
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	03/09/2021
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	1,115,914
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Stephanie McCurry is the author of Confederate Reckoning, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the Frederick Douglass Prize, the Merle Curti Prize, the Avery O. Craven Award, and the Willie Lee Rose Prize; and Masters of Small Worlds, winner of the John Hope Franklin Prize and four other awards. She also received a Guggenheim Fellowship. McCurry is the R. Gordon Hoxie Professor of History in Honor of Dwight D. Eisenhower at Columbia University. She grew up in Belfast, Ireland, during the Troubles.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Prologue 1

1 Enemy Women and the Laws of War 15

2 The Story of the Black Soldier's Wife 63

3 Reconstructing a Life amid the Ruins 124

Epilogue 203

Notes 215

Acknowledgments 281

Index 287

Editorial Reviews

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

Correcting histories that erase women’s share in wartime work, McCurry reminds us that ‘Women are never just witnesses to war.’

Wall Street Journal

Identifies a durable commitment to patriarchy that outlasted slavery and sustained white supremacy through the Civil War and beyond…McCurry sets out to view the South’s ordeal in the Civil War ‘through women’s eyes,’ a perspective too often ignored in histories of warfare.

Times Literary Supplement

With uncommon comparative sizzle and a deep grounding in gender, legal, and racial history, McCurry has written a stunning portrayal of a tragedy endured and survived by women. Horror and hardship in this case have inspirited beautiful writing. Women’s War gives the legions of Civil War era readers a unique, unsettling, and enriching understanding of the conflict. Women were not mere witnesses to war; McCurry is our witness to how they died and lived through this cataclysm.

David W. Blight

Traces three narratives to argue that ‘there is no Civil War history without women in it.’ Women waged grassroots campaigns that informed the new concept of ‘Civilian as Enemy’—the trial of the Confederate spy Cara Judd altered martial law—and shaped the Union’s refugee policy and the terms of the peace. McCurry scrutinizes legal archives compiled by men, seeking glimpses of women they overlooked, whose voices enliven the book.

New Yorker

As Stephanie 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. Her account of Southern white women’s participation in rebel resistance, black women’s roles in their own emancipation, and the prostrated condition of the women as well as men of the planter class after the war paves the way to a better integration of women into the story of this era.

James M. McPherson

Eloquently refutes the idea that ‘women are outside of war.’ Building on a generation of scholarship, she reminds us that women’s stories both shaped and were shaped by the American Civil War.

North Carolina Historical Review - Brian Neumann

As [McCurry] argues, women don’t just watch history from the sidelines; they make it, they act in it, they are very much part of it. To see women as innocent wallflowers in need of protection could prove a deadly mistake when women were serving as smugglers, scouts, decoys, insurgents, and combatants; ignore them at your peril.

New Republic

Stephanie McCurry challenges us once again to look at the Civil War through a different lens. She demonstrates how women’s participation changed not only their lives but the very understanding of war itself—its laws, its mechanisms of violence, its legacies and aftermath. 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

As [McCurry] argues, women don’t just watch history from the sidelines; they make it, they act in it, they are very much part of it. To see women as innocent wallflowers in need of protection could prove a deadly mistake when women were serving as smugglers, scouts, decoys, insurgents, and combatants; ignore them at your peril.

New Republic - Brenda Wineapple

Identifies a durable commitment to patriarchy that outlasted slavery and sustained white supremacy through the Civil War and beyond…McCurry sets out to view the South’s ordeal in the Civil War ‘through women’s eyes,’ a perspective too often ignored in histories of warfare.

Times Literary Supplement - Amy Murrell Taylor

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 - Chandra Manning

"[Stephen McCurry] demonstrates how women's participation changed not only their lives but the very understanding of war itself--its laws, its mechanisms of violence, its legacies and aftermath. 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

From the Publisher

Correcting histories that erase women’s share in wartime work, McCurry reminds us that ‘Women are never just witnesses to war.’

Wall Street Journal

Traces three narratives to argue that ‘there is no Civil War history without women in it.’ Women waged grassroots campaigns that informed the new concept of ‘Civilian as Enemy’—the trial of the Confederate spy Cara Judd altered martial law—and shaped the Union’s refugee policy and the terms of the peace. McCurry scrutinizes legal archives compiled by men, seeking glimpses of women they overlooked, whose voices enliven the book.

New Yorker

Teri Schnaubelt gives a brisk and energetic narration of this look at the role of women in the American Civil War. McCurry notes how women, free and enslaved, Northern and Southern, were active participants in furthering the goals of whatever side they supported. The challenge of how to deal with supposed noncombatants/civilians has always been a part of warfare and leads to many messy circumstances. As the war continued, the treatment of noncombatants became increasingly harsh. Schnaubelt has a clear voice and a direct, forceful delivery that may be due in part to the author’s tone. Her pace is brisk and her intonation somewhat staccato, but the listener is able to follow. M.T.F. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

JULY 2020 - AudioFile