New and Noteworthy: Confederate Women Prisoners of War [With Interview Link]

Women Making War: Female Confederate Prisoners and Union Military Justice, Thomas F. Curran

274 pages, 6 x 9.25, 18 illustrations, bibliography, index, paperback, $26.50

 

Partisan activities of disloyal women and the Union army’s reaction
 
During the American Civil War, more than four hundred women were arrested and imprisoned by the Union Army in the St. Louis area. The majority of these women were fully aware of the political nature of their actions and had made conscious decisions to assist Confederate soldiers in armed rebellion against the U.S. government. Their crimes included offering aid to Confederate soldiers, smuggling, spying, sabotaging, and, rarely, serving in the Confederate army. Historian Thomas F. Curran’s extensive research highlights for the first time the female Confederate prisoners in the St. Louis area, and his thoughtful analysis shows how their activities affected Federal military policy.
 
Early in the war, Union officials felt reluctant to arrest women and waited to do so until their conduct could no longer be tolerated. The war progressed, the women’s disloyal activities escalated, and Federal response grew stronger. Some Confederate partisan women were banished to the South, while others were held at Alton Military Prison and other sites. The guerilla war in Missouri resulted in more arrests of women, and the task of incarcerating them became more complicated.
 
The women’s offenses were seen as treasonous by the Federal government. By determining that women—who were excluded from the politics of the male public sphere—were capable of treason, Federal authorities implicitly acknowledged that women acted in ways that had serious political meaning. Nearly six decades before U.S. women had the right to vote, Federal officials who dealt with Confederate partisan women routinely referred to them as citizens. Federal officials created a policy that conferred on female citizens the same obligations male citizens had during time of war and rebellion, and they prosecuted disloyal women in the same way they did disloyal men.
 
The women arrested in the St. Louis area are only a fraction of the total number of female southern partisans who found ways to advance the Confederate military cause. More significant than their numbers, however, is what the fragmentary records of these women reveal about the activities that led to their arrests, the reactions women partisans evoked from the Federal authorities who confronted them, the impact that women’s partisan activities had on Federal military policy and military prisons, and how these women’s experiences were subsumed to comport with a Lost Cause myth—the need for valorous men to safeguard the homes of defenseless women.

Text Source:  Southern Illinois University Press

Author Interview: H-Net

New and Noteworthy: Illinois Soldiers In Their Letters, in Their Words

In Their Letters, in Their Words: Illinois Civil War Soldiers Write Home,  Mark Flotow, editor, Southern Illinois University Press, 320 pages, 12 illustrations, 2 maps,  bibliographic notes, bibliography, index, October 2019, $26.00.

From The Publisher: A vital lifeline to home during the Civil War, the letters of soldiers to their families and friends remain a treasure for those seeking to connect with and understand the most turbulent period of American history. Rather than focus on the experiences of a few witnesses, this impressively researched book documents 165 Illinois Civil War soldiers’ and sailors’ lives through the lens of their personal letters. Editor Mark Flotow chose a variety of letter writers who hailed from counties throughout the state, served in different branches of the military at different ranks, and represented the gamut of social experiences and war outcomes.

Flotow provides extensive quotations from the letters. By allowing the soldiers to speak for themselves, he captures what mattered most to them. Illinois soldiers wrote about their reasons for enlisting; the nature of training and duties; necessities like eating, sleeping, marching, and making the best of often harsh and chaotic circumstances; Southern culture; slavery; their opinions of commanding officers and the president; disease, medicine, and hospitals; their prisoner-of-war experiences; and the ways they left the army. Through letters from afar, many soldiers sought to manage their homes and farms, while some single men attempted to woo their sweethearts.

Flotow includes brief biographies for each soldier quoted in the book, weaves historical context and analysis with the letters, and organizes them by topic. Thus, intimate details cited in individual letters reveal their significance for those who lived and shaped this tumultuous era. The result is not only insightful history but also compelling reading.

Preface ix

1. A Lifeline of Letters                                      2. Illinois Citizens Become Soldiers

3. Camp Life and Bonding with the Boys         4. Soldiering

5. Managing Affairs from Afar                         6. Seeing the Elephant

7. Southern Culture through Northern Eye       8. Officers, Generals, and “Old Abe

9. Debility and Diseases                                  10.  Writing the Indescribable as P.O.Ws 11. Soldiers No More

Appendix A: Soldiers’ Brief Biographies

  Appendix B: Chronology of the Civil War

   Appendix C: Quoted Soldiers, by County of Origin

Endorsements:  “Words matter, and by allowing Illinois soldiers to speak for themselves, the Civil War comes alive anew. Flotow helps us envision the ‘real war’ that Walt Whitman observed would ‘never get in the books.’ The editor’s fresh approach provides an intimate and illuminating portrait of the war and those who fought it. In Their Letters, in Their Words is a superb addition to Civil War literature.”—Stephen D. Engle, author of Gathering to Save a Nation: Lincoln and the Union’s War Governors

 “Flotow has done a fine job of linking together, as well as comparing and contrasting, the comments of 165 Illinois soldiers on a wide variety of Civil War subjects. The result is an enjoyable and thought-provoking read for anyone with an interest in the Civil War.”—Glenna R. Schroeder-Lein, author of The Encyclopedia of Civil War Medicine