Research Catalog

Title

Daughters of the Union : northern women fight the Civil War / Nina Silber.

Author

Silber, Nina.

Publication

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2005.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

332 pages : illustrations; 22 cm

Summary

"Daughters of the Union casts a spotlight on some of the most overlooked and least understood participants in the American Civil War: the women of the North. Unlike their Confederate counterparts, who were often caught in the midst of the conflict, most Northern women remained far from the dangers of battle. Nonetheless, they enlisted in the Union cause on their home ground, and the experience transformed their lives." "Nina Silber traces the emergence of a new sense of self and citizenship among the women left behind by Union soldiers. She offers a complex account, bolstered by women's own words from diaries and letters, of the changes in activity and attitude wrought by the war. Women became wage-earners, participants in partisan politics, and active contributors to the war effort. But even as their political and civic identities expanded, they were expected to subordinate themselves to male-dominated government and military bureaucracies." "The Civil War required many women to act with greater independence in running their households and in expressing their political views. It brought women more firmly into the civic sphere and ultimately gave them new public roles, which would prove crucial starting points for the late-nineteenth-century feminist struggle for social and political equality."--BOOK JACKET.

Alternative Title

Northern women fight the Civil War

Subject

• Women > Northeastern States > History > 19th century
• Women > Northeastern States > Social conditions > 19th century
• Women > Social conditions > Northeastern States > 19th century
• Sex role > Northeastern States > History > 19th century
• United States > Women. > Civil War, 1861-1865
• United States > Social aspects. > Civil War, 1861-1865

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Prologue : summoned to war, charged to patriotism -- 1. Loyalties in conflict -- 2. The economic battlefront -- 3. Domesticity under siege -- 4. From patriots to partisans, and back again -- 5. Aiding the cause, serving the state -- 6. Saving the sick, healing the nation -- 7. Wartime emancipation -- 8. American women and the enduring power of the state -- Epilogue : an ambiguous legacy.

ISBN

0674016777

LCCN

2004059779

OCLC

• ocm56685208
• SCSB-5177598

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries