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 Notes Acknowledgments Index
Challenging prevalent misconceptions about women's role in the Civil War North, Nina Silber offers a fascinating account of how the war experience both opened new opportunities for female independence and tied women more and more closely to the needs of an activist state. An important addition to our understanding of the crisis of the Union. -- Eric Foner, De Witt Clinton Professor of History, Columbia University Southern women both white and black became direct participants in a Civil War that in many cases swept over their homes and farms. While the same was not true for most Northern women, they too experienced unprecedented engagement with public affairs as they mobilized themselves to support the war. Nina Silber's excellent study of this engagement gives new and broader meaning to Lincoln's description of the Civil War as 'a People's contest'- all the people. -- James M. McPherson, author of Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg This is the most comprehensive and deeply researched study of northern women in the Civil War to date, and one of the best books on gender in crisis in many years. Silber's achievement is profound: an engaging, nuanced, persuasive story of how the Civil War did not progressively put women on the course of liberation, but by throwing them into the civic realm in unprecedented ways, fostered a new realization of their political selves and of their social and legal subordination. Silber's Yankee women are patriots, rarely feminist heroines, always complex historical actors. -- David W. Blight, author of Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory We have all eagerly awaited this indispensable book. Nina Silber's engaging and definitive study presents a new side of the Civil War experience in the North and a new dimension of the history of American women. -- Drew Faust, author of Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War Northern women have remained a curiously neglected group in the massive literature on the Civil War. Nina Silber's study brings them to the fore, examining the myriad ways in which the conflict impinged on their lives and underscoring the complex legacy it bequeathed in terms of their relationship to the nation-state. Admirably researched, clearly written, and forcefully argued, this splendid book will appeal to anyone interested in how women of the North fit into the grand mosaic of our defining national trial. -- Gary W. Gallagher, author of The Confederate War
Nina Silber is Professor of History at Boston University.
Challenging prevalent misconceptions about women's role in the
Civil War North, Nina Silber offers a fascinating account of how
the war experience both opened new opportunities for female
independence and tied women more and more closely to the needs of
an activist state. An important addition to our understanding of
the crisis of the Union. -- Eric Foner, De Witt Clinton Professor
of History, Columbia University
Southern women both white and black became direct participants in a
Civil War that in many cases swept over their homes and farms.
While the same was not true for most Northern women, they too
experienced unprecedented engagement with public affairs as they
mobilized themselves to support the war. Nina Silber's excellent
study of this engagement gives new and broader meaning to Lincoln's
description of the Civil War as 'a People's contest'- all the
people. -- James M. McPherson, author of Hallowed Ground: A Walk
at Gettysburg
This is the most comprehensive and deeply researched study of
northern women in the Civil War to date, and one of the best books
on gender in crisis in many years. Silber's achievement is
profound: an engaging, nuanced, persuasive story of how the Civil
War did not progressively put women on the course of liberation,
but by throwing them into the civic realm in unprecedented ways,
fostered a new realization of their political selves and of their
social and legal subordination. Silber's Yankee women are patriots,
rarely feminist heroines, always complex historical actors. --
David W. Blight, author of Race and Reunion: The Civil War in
American Memory
We have all eagerly awaited this indispensable book. Nina Silber's
engaging and definitive study presents a new side of the Civil War
experience in the North and a new dimension of the history of
American women. -- Drew Faust, author of Mothers of Invention:
Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War
Northern women have remained a curiously neglected group in the
massive literature on the Civil War. Nina Silber's study brings
them to the fore, examining the myriad ways in which the conflict
impinged on their lives and underscoring the complex legacy it
bequeathed in terms of their relationship to the nation-state.
Admirably researched, clearly written, and forcefully argued, this
splendid book will appeal to anyone interested in how women of the
North fit into the grand mosaic of our defining national trial. --
Gary W. Gallagher, author of The Confederate War
In this provocative, challenging work, Silber writes ordinary women
onto the page and reshapes the boundaries of Civil War history. Her
attention to the presence of Northern black women is particularly
noteworthy. * Publishers Weekly *
Daughters of the Union: Northern Women Fight the Civil War
is an innovative analysis that is sure to inspire a reconsideration
of northern women's patriotism and its long-term results. Silber's
analytical strengths and narrative style make this an engaging
study for students and scholars of both women's and Civil War
history. -- Victoria E. Ott * Journal of Southern History *
Nina Silber uses [an] ordinary woman's appeal to the president to
reveal the complexities of Northern women's relationships with the
nation-state during the Civil War...In this concise and accessible
work, Silber argues that the Civil War brought Northern women into
a more public relationship with the federal government, but that
this relationship was framed in terms of their subordination to it.
Using women's diaries and letters, she discusses how such changes
affected Northern women and their understandings of women's civic
and political responsibilities. While many historians see the Civil
War as prodding Northern women to increased autonomy and feminist
political action, Silber demonstrates that the war's impact on
women was more complicated than that. The war brought neither
complete liberation nor complete oppression for women, but a bit of
both...There are important lessons here for scholars in many
fields, as Silber shows how women's experiences in wartime both
reveal and affect social, cultural, and political events. -- Kara
Dixon Vuic * Journal of Military History *
This important book fills a significant gap in existing scholarship
on women and the Civil War. By focusing on northern women in
general, rather than on the minority who left home to engage in war
work, it reveals that paying attention to women--even those who did
not play a large role in organized war work--changes our
understanding of the legacy of the Civil War itself. -- Barbara
Cutter * Annals of Iowa *
Daughters of the Union is an important tome in the canon of
Civil War women's studies...Dr. Silber brings a fresh perspective
to the active participation of Northern women during the war. Her
thesis is well documented and should be required reading in Civil
War history programs and political science curriculum, in addition
to women's studies programs. -- Janet Leigh Bucklew * H-Net Online
*
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