Transcripts For CSPAN3 Historians Discuss Women And Union Soldier Encounters 20170611

While we wait for the next speaker, you can also watch all their award to Conference Coverage you can watch all of our Civil War Institute Conference Coverage online. Us your thoughts and connect with us on facebook. This is American History tv, only on cspan3. To introduce to you lisa tendrich frank. She is an independent historian, editor, and writer on all issues related to the american civil war. She is based out of tallahassee, florida. She studied at the university of florida where she received her phd. She did her phd under one of the Great Southern historians. Birchame is her chum wyatt brown. He had an incredible career, his most important book entitled so honor. Southern she has a very impressive publication record, or most recent book released by else you and the title, the civilian war, confederate women and Union Soldiers during shermans march. We have talked a lot about original research and those historians who love to dig into the archives. Thats book is full of primary research. She will reveal to us new dimensions of shermans march. You will hear the voices of women that are often overlooked. It is my pleasure to introduce lisa tendrich frank. [applause] prof. Frank thank you for that wonderful introduction. Thank you to the Civil War Institute for inviting me today. Thank you to all of you who came up here on a sunday morning to hear about my research on confederate Union Soldiers. I always enjoy talking about it, and it is enjoyable for me to discuss it with a knowledgeable i is and vicinity of ground. Knowledgeable audience and the vicinity of how the ground. Most of us can imagine the burning of atlanta and columbia, the turning up railroads, and destruction of vacations. Perhaps on account of shermans bluntness have thrived in popular memory. Perhaps none more than war is hell. Converters saw this campaign differently than many other features of the campaign. Bedrooms,ntering smashing cannons, and reading private diaries. His is an assault on conventional gender norms and is the heart of my research. I will start by introducing a few of the more prominent and representative voices. The first is the architect and overseer of the campaign, Union General willam sherman. 1864, he vowed to make georgia hell. He noticed early in the war that the entire south, man, woman, and child are against us, armed and determines. Acknowledging all confederates as enemies, he signaled his willingness to bring the war ,ome to the confederates directly into southern homes. Beginning with his capture of atlanta and eviction of civilians, and his continued l sherman and his soldiers invaded the homes of wealthy confederates, those people they blamed for the war, in the hopes that a violation of the domestic space would encourage the surrender of southern women and their soldier husbands, fathers, brothers, friends. Or confederate women can they recognize this would be designed to it than on their big repeatedly railed against an enemy who did not recognize domestic boundaries. On the contrary, in 1865 letter to his wife, sherman explained that the confederates regardless just as the romans did the goths. The parallel is not unjust. The other perspective is that of wealthy slaveholding women, those who personally encountered soldiers. Like most elite women in South Carolina, Mary Leverett did not see eye to eye with Union Officers very often. Agencys event, she expressed ideas about the union asion that carlisle parallel those of her sworn enemy. She explained that her family in columbia had faced an ordeal unmatched by anything they had experienced before and something they could never prepared to encounter, invasion of their home by Union Soldiers. Although technology it was widely reported that terms were private property respected, women and children unmolested, she wanted her children to know that those terms were a sham. They had disregarded the prohibitions about women and their possessions and had instead pillaged. The destruction of her private property to all forms. Soldiers smashed open desks and broke open doors with axes, but they have also entered the feminine inner sanctum of the home, the bedroom. She was horrified that they had crept under the bed and mortified that they did not even leave for a second suit of underclothes. They also confiscated many seemingly trivial domestic items, which made her personally feel the sting of the raid. They left with the comb and broke up in my work box and stole my scissors. When she appealed to Union Officers were help, they taunted her and showed her the old statehouse flag with a look of exultation. Her day continued with repetitions of the same rights as riotous scenes. She tried to keep calm. She was determined they should not see she was afraid. Throughout shermans march, similar scenes of soldiers invading domestic scenes occurred. Deemed yankee demons destroyed domestic property. , suspense that transpired around her, including as the houses burned down one after another, terrified women and children rushed to the asylum for safety, surrounded by those yelling devils who tore open their trunks and gave to negroes. Even the columbia ladies asylum, a place of literal century, offered little protection. Soldiers taunted and hassled the women who fled there. Cursing and screaming up and down, swearing they were going to blow the asylum that. The 500 terrified women who took shelter in the asylum feared for their lives. One woman reportedly died of fright. Other women to do the woods for the ones fork to safety. Ladies, one of you go into your city to warm yourself . Leverett and many of her peers in the war and the confederate cause through the prism of the unions dishonorable behavior and their personal shame. Justified then invasion of homes as an effective wartime tactic and a just punishment of treasonous behavior, slaveholding women came to different conclusions. They desperately tried to spread the word about the outrage in columbia. Our men must know how we have been treated. Leverett appealed to a sense of honor and manliness with the assumption that the knowledge of the treatment of confederate would invigorate southern soldiers. If they give up, or their knees shake, i will not cap and is not them asogs not count men, but as dogs who deserve to die. When asked if she was ready to give up, she responded no, it would make us more determined and drive any man into the field. It was a good thing for us. When yankee soldiers suggested that southern men needed to come home and take care of their families, she disagreed. She said the women would take selves, thatr she was willing to suffer and bear calamity. Stories like this one, told frequently by confederate women and confirmed by Union Soldiers, build the historical record of shermans campaign. These details support one another. Union soldiers run about these incidents with pride and joy. Those who brought war on the country deserve all the curses and allegations the people can pour out. Shermans march through georgia and the carolinas, confederate women and union men faced off in domestic confrontations. The personal stories of these confrontations are critical to understand the war and its results. The most revealing elements of the campaign are found in the domestic skirmishes that took place in slaveholding womens parlour and bedrooms. Soldiers march brought into the homes of the enemy as partcreating personal battles between yankee men and those they deemed southern sinners. These battles shape the outcome of the war. Its historical legacies and the fate of the nation. Let me return to the standard outline of the campaign. Sherman took Union Soldiers under his command to set up to crush the confederacy possibility and will to continue its war rebellion. After capturing and occupying atlanta, georgia, union troops began marching east in november. At the end of the march to the sea and a brief occupation of savannah, they continued their campaign into the carolinas at the beginning of 1865. I the time the campaign ended near durham station, sherman assessed it inflicted more than 100 million in physical damage and acknowledged he had earned the scorn of confederates for civilianach to the population. Having secured the surrender of john smith, the union proclaimed the march a success. The campaign had for field fulfilled its goals, to break the will of confederates and to destroy the material and Human Resources supporting the rebel military. Todays talk is designed to get us to rethink the connection between these goals. Between the breaking of the will of the confederates and the destruction of resources. Rather than focus on the material world, my examination focuses on the personal reaction of southern women to the invasion. Throughout the campaign, shermans troop marched through the lower part of the south, purposely cutting through farms and plantations. This chosen path of destruction which commanders designed to target the families and households of the lower souths wealthier slaveholders and political leaders lead to interactions between northern soldiers and delete sub and elite southern women. To look at took aim the class and gender. So was it was with wealthy, slaveowning women. Although they generally avoided physical contact with these found Union Soldiers countless ways to strike at femininity and livelihood. Shermans men lived off the land. They also lived off the households they invaded. They confiscated supplies of wealthy southerners in their path and destroyed of much of what they could not take with them. This assault went far beyond foraging for food and burning supplies. Union soldiers ravage the interiors of the homes they andred, went into bedrooms other areas. Verbally assaulted women, threatened rape and unleashed a direct assault on domestic life on the southern home front. In those instances, these actions formed part of the plan that sherman and his troops articulated prior to and justified throughout the campaign. One that would assert the aggressively masculine power of the union over the passively feminine south. Stoodslaveholding women at the center of shermans campaign through the heartland. Throughout the campaign, Domestic Workers tactics shake the behavior of northern soldiers. Sherman and his men marched out of atlanta with the intention of punishing the slaveholding class who, in their minds, caused the word war. The enemies they faced were primarily wealthy women whose defeat required tactics appropriate to their station and sex. This meant more than dismantling railroads and burning fields. It meant attacking the various manifestations of light elite byale slaveholding privilege waging a civilian war specifically designed for the gender of class and class, sherman hoped to destroy slaveholding womens desire to continue supporting the war. He continued this Campaign Even though he recognized his capture of savannah did little to the female civilians who he said remained bright as ever. For their part, confederate women face the enemies on their own terms, responding with specifically feminine forms of defiance. Working with assumptions about wartime standards of respectability and how they imagined Union Soldiers would treat them and their bodies, these women defended themselves and their properties from what one woman described as a hellish crew, no place, no prison is sacred from their. The campaign against elite women required cruelty nor vindictiveness, it did not target innocent women. Sherman direct it his men to slaveholding women because he understood they had, in part, brought the war to the union and had sustained the confederate war effort. Sherman in the Union Leadership recognized elite white womens roles in initiating southern rebellion. When the war began, slaveholding women encouraged men to enlist in the army and in cap them on the battlefield with supplies and letters of support. Continue their continued dedication through material and moral support became increasingly problematic as the union worked to hasten the war to an end. As shermans men approached the city, the women of columbia, South Carolina held a fundraiser to fund the war effort. Elite women were hardly disconnected from the war effort. Commanders, the u. S. Made the home front and it slaveholding female inhabitants an important part of the battle plan. Philip sheridan brought the war directly to women in the Shenandoah Valley well sherman worked to bring the war home to elite women in georgia and the carolinas. He recognized if you were dealing with a hostile female population and treated it as such. After he captured atlanta, he felt the civilians, most of whom were william women and children. Hed knowledge them is the enemy and refused to be lenient on account of their gender. Sherman made clear his appreciation of white southern womens dedication to the confederacy and their involvement early in the conflict. Explaining to his brother that the entire south, man, woman and child are against us, arent and determined. Slaveholdingived southern women as confederates, rebels and enemies and treated them accordingly. Surprisingly, many historians of shermans march overlook this. Scholars frequently discussed civilians, but these civilians too often appear in narratives and interpretations as stories of personal interest rather than historical importance. Civilians are in the way of shermans war, but they are not considered a part of his way of war. , thest narratives occasional skirmishes with confederate soldiers which happened less frequently as the Campaign Group longer received more attention than the more common interactions with female civilians. Bringing gender and the experience of elite women to the forefront of an interpretation of shermans march provide a new way for historians to understand the damage. This offers an alternative to scholars will struggle to understand the extent of the damage and have engaged in what turns into a social science debate over how much visible damage occurred. Rather than count destroyed homes or literally assessed damages, in my work i demonstrate how gender norms turn typically overlooked acts into insults and psychological attacks. Elite confederate women generally understood as normal the destruction of factories and the freeing of enslaved people. Whenr affronts occurred Union Soldiers took axes to pianos, stole private diaries, paradedhina sets around mockingly in wedding gowns and otherwise took acts towards bedrooms, private dangers bedroom chambers and other things. One confederate woman raged the yankees had no respect whatsoever for a ladys private room. Women accepted some acts as wartime realities and viewed others as evidence of yankee barbarics. Approach counters even as it embraces recent assessments of shermans march that appointed to the ways the campaigns physical destruction has been overstated. As much as sherman to care declared he would smash things to the sea, the soldiers did not burn every town, tear up every railroad or ransacked every home. Atlanta woodburn but this can fly great would burn. Sherman waged war on the home front, but in a restrained manner. Mark grimsley and perhaps the of the march, he waged more than total war. Is flexiblelogy enough to include operations aimed at the destruction of economic resources, forced evacuations or confiscation of property. Addition, it captures the idea of tactics that result in the erosion of the enemys will to resist by deliberately subjecting the population to the pressures of war. Others have conflated the lack of widespread burning with the lack of direct engagement of the civilian enemy. In doing so, they dismiss as inconsequential civilian and military reports of domestic destruction. One distinguished scholar had even concluded that in general, shermans army treated southern civilians well. Although admitting that muchans troops destroyed of South Carolina, this emphasizes that Union Soldiers did not set fire to georgians homes. There is an exception. Except in the case of prominent confederates whose homes universally received the torch. Do not deny that many southerners in georgia and the carolinas escape with their homes and private property intact. I look at these prominent georgians whose homes were in fact attacked. Many scholarly attempts to portray a less damaging campaign ignore the ways that sherman and his troops burned their way through the south. The study of the physical degree of damage to buildings does not set apart the psychological injunction visited on the home front. The scholars dismissal of feminine complaints of destruction, the loss of their wedding gowns and other domestic items as frivolous and inconsequential minimizes the importance of what women experienced at the hands of enemy soldiers. Although not directly tied to the fighting of the confederate war, the ransacking on the slaveholdings womans private letters with infinitely tied to an attempt to destroy her confidence in and support for the confederacy. , the typical reassessment of the damages focused on the masculine effect of the march. The loss of what scholars call the economically valuable items such as crops and buildings. However, bringing gender to the forefront reveals a more complicated story. It mayh at first glance seem like confederate women were upset over the loss of frivolous items, they more precisely expressed their anger over shermans troops knowingly destroying those items that does defined white female privilege. Such actions demonstrated Union Soldiers have little regard for the presumed respectability of elite slaveholding women. Union soldiers did not scatter handkerchiefs to the wind. To their elite female enemies, these items represented a crossing of boundaries that was unforgivable. Although contemporary observers and modern scholars have tirelessly discussed the destructive war or hard war privilegesesearch gendered ambition in particular. I explore the way gender structure restrains tactics. Sherman designed his campaign to destroy the southern landscape and to assert northern domination over the south. Few historians acknowledge the centrality of slaveholding southern women and domesticity of union tactics. Instead, most focus on the official military objective of the march, to destroy the confederacys ability to supply as well as to destroy the morale of the supporters. With few exceptions, scholars have conflated the two goals, assuming union attempt to destroy material sources constitute the sole means of crushing the spirits of the rebels who supported secession and the confederacy. In addition, their assessments have invariably defined confederate supporters with an on gendered or even mail definition of civilians. As a result, they treat the campaign as a conflict between theyn the battlefield as ignore the presence and power of the wealthy and largely female civilian population. Because union troops faced little sustained resistance from the confederate military, most march focus on the witch sherman and his men progressed through the south and asserted the military advantage. Participants play down the womens place in the march. Although he made war on civilian enemies, Union Officer Henry Hitchcock minimize the role of women as enemy combatants. He asserted that during the march to the sea, we have met no. Pposition the idea that Union Soldiers met no opposition prioritizes what happened while they were between cities, towns and homesteads and the confrontation between soldiers and civilians. I turning women into passive victims, scholars have left the impression the north actually invaded and acquiescence south. The invasion itself could not be understood without an spacetanding of who is a was invaded, how yankee soldiers viewed white southerners, how slaveholding women viewed the incursion. Some Union Soldiers recognize the gendered implications of their action, including one who noted that some women were rabid rebels, but all were polite to us. Except when we were searching their houses. Women made the connection clear. There is no word in english language Strong Enough to express our hatred and contempt for an enemy so degraded that they were gentlemen if they were gentlemen, we could there it better. For their part, confederate soldiers wanted to do the honorable thing and of then your private wrongs or impulse by returning home. Commentscommon demonstrate, gender a limited the undertone. Women at s elite a significant aspect of the campaign both as targets and participants. A gendered form of power shape shermans military during the campaign. The campaign was more than a detached military and political strategy to show the south the more superior strength. Early in the war, sherman understood the utility of the people rather than just the army. Sherman himself made the connection between the military campaign and a demonstration of power explicit when he acknowledged despite the fact he could not change the hearts the people of the south, he would make war so terrible and make them so sick of it that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it. He believed confederates had brought this punishment upon themselves. In early 1864, he commented that a people who persevere beyond a certain limit on to know the consequences. In his georgia and carolinas campaign, sherman had not put in a to show those consequences and to give confederates what he saw as a much deserved display of northerner strength. To showned the campaign the strength of the union army and explicit we stated the campaign designed to demonstrate to the world we have power would be Proof Positive that the north could prevail. And would no doubt and the southern war effort. Southerners would be forced to recognize the union power and from then on, continually wonder about the norths willingness to use that power. Sherman hoped to intimidate all southerners male and female with a forceful display of the military dominance. Which shermans march, the union launched a gender specific military campaign on the homefront that encompassed an active female population and focused on their domestic trappings. Yankee soldiers focused on the world of southern elite femininity, a world exceptionally privileged in its command of human and material possessions. Throughout the march, Union Soldiers treated elite southern , albeit enemies feminine ones and no longer allowed them the protections afforded their gendered during peace time. Done ions were soldiers,to union female confederates became a population in need of subduing. Sherman himself made this goal clear. He said this movement is not purely military or strategic, but will illustrate the vulnerability of the south. Furthermore, it would make the inhabitants feel that war and individual ruin are synonymous terms. Sherman and his shoulder soldiers understood the nature of their attack and willingly brought the war home. Union soldiers engaged in it with hostile slaveholding women does not discount the physical damage they wreaked upon the confederate landscape. The destruction of the lower south economy complement to the domestic warfare waged on its inhabitants. As sherman explained, the goal of the campaign was the utter destruction of its roads, houses, and people. In an effort to destroy the confederates ability to wage war, sherman soldiers freed thousands of enslaved africans as they destroyed miles of railroad track, acres of cotton plantation and food. They also watched with glee as parts of atlanta, charleston, and columbia burned. The creation of shermans should not be separated from the destruction of cloth neckties and other articles of clothing. In gendered terms, the railroad represented the ability to wage war, the bedroom represented the willingness to sustain the fight. My work also built upon a progression of scholarships that gender and culture used to reinterpret battlefield and homefront to minimize and blur the distinction. For more than a generation, scholars have brought to life in the Important Role of female soldiers, nurses, spies and government workers. Embrace theans stories of wartime women without changing the fundamental narrative of the war. Female nurses cared for male soldiers, female soldiers pretended to be men. Men makeies helped better or worse battlefield decisions. Authors of these accounts offered new narratives of the war that hardly segregated women out of them, many historians remain content to include women as a supporting cast. Surprisingly, many scholarly accounts of the war explore the experience of civilians without adequate lead knowledge and the numeric dominance of women in this population. And the way this reality shaped the war itself. The traditional narrative is crumbling even if it is doing so slowly. Africanamerican experience have increasingly privileged role with enslaved men and women not just enlisted africanamerican men. Enslaved africanamericans in these interpretations did not need to a list in the union army or Service Nurses to shape the outcome. To thehallenges narrative have come from a reinterpretation that treats the in gender. S a crisis integrating men, women and gender becomes important when exploring battles and campaigns that took place on the home front. Consequently, shermans march offers an opportunity to understand how gender shaped the course of the military campaign. From the perspectives of soldiers and civilians. Indicatives march is of the war as a whole, it further demonstrates the need to apply gender to all aspects. In which the homefront and battlefront often were. Implicationsning, and examine from either perspective, gender shaped the behavior of everyone involved in and affected by this offensive. Union officials designed the march with gender in mind as they planned an attack on a homefront filled with women. The union destroyed confederate possibility to wage war. Instead, the confrontations between yankee soldiers and slaveholding women were intentional and inseparable from the events and tactics that the traditionally emphasized. These confrontations also illuminated soldiers understanding of manliness and masculinity. The response of confederate soldiers to the homefront campaign is often best oferstood through the lens southern manhood. During the march, confederate toen and little choice but confront each other. Soldiers and civilians expected the gender would restrain each others behavior. Hiddenrate women valuables and weapons under their skirts and their bedroom and in babies cribs and they demanded the protection afforded to respectable women. When facetoface with the enemy , they also responded with the feminine weapon of words keeping vitriolic tirades on those they thought as ungentlemanly invaders. Ther first recounting invaders, a south carolinians reported the Union Soldiers who ran back her Family Plantation said of the women in carolina were the plucky us, the bravest, the most outspoken they had met in the south. At the same time, confederate women rarely formed volunteer militias or defended their homes with physical violence. On a few occasions they did form female home guards, usually not armed, and carried guns under their skirts. They did so only in case union men engaged in active physical or sexual violence. When these fears did not materialize, the weapons remain hidden unless discovered by invading soldiers who themselves violated prewar ideas about womanhood and searching womens bodies. Gender similarly restrained union men and create an attack created tactics designed for female enemies. Break certain rules of etiquette, Union Soldiers generally refrain from physically attacking white women s bodies. Instead, using methods described to attack their identity, soldiers inflicted the hardships of war on various manifestations of confederate womanhood. ,hey burned and ransacked homes the geographic epicenter of womanhood in the american south. Even when they left buildings standings, they often destroyed domestic that made the house a home. Soldiers frequently ransacked bedrooms, rummage through womens unmentionables. Of dead relics relatives. Freed domestic and field slaves. Smashed pianos and otherwise destroyed various vestiges of elite white womens world. Several soldiers let descriptions similar to this where one fellow played on the piano while his comrade danced on top of the instrument and then he drove and ask through it. Rather than the actions of unrestrained men in the chaos of ar or the necessary to be army on the move. This was designed to psychologically beat women and men of the confederacy. Incorporating gender into the military story complicates the connection between shermans march and the union victory. Confederate women often urged emerged more committed. Even if elite women were generally stronger secessionists than men, this ardent confederate loyalty was even more pronounced after union troops left their house. In confederateed women when one created a hatred that knows no change and a people who can never forget what they have done, even to the 10th generation. The march helped ensure union despite dubbed but what sherman told his wife, it did not break the pride of the south or it. Thedistinction between nature and extent of the damage explained by slaveholding women remains steadfast and committed to the confederate cause when there prospects seemed most dim. An enemyrn women that violated the bassist rules of polite society. Etc. Soldiers came to a different conclusion. Choosing to abandon the fight in order to return home to protect their family. Although it did not destroy confederate womens will to fight, it achieved the desire to end. Southern men saw it as an insult to their manliness. They felt strongly the failure of their inability to protect their ladies from the barbarians of the north and as a result, many lost the will to fight. Told hisderate soldier mother how frustrated he was after hearing of your treatment and unable to lend a helping hand. Woodruffly feeling revolt against the actions of our enemy. The enduring loyalty of confederate loyalty desk confederate women to the lost fore created an issue scholars. Many records of the war were written in public years, if not decades after the war ended. The memoirs were written to rewrite the war. They reflect what historian legend of phenyl sacrifice. To counter this in my research, i have avoided using memoirs and other accounts written significant after the significantly after the war had ended. Fortunately, many civilians and Soldiers Left extensive journals describing the events and people around them. Andlding women in both union and confederate Soldiers Left by letters detailing the campaign and its personal aspect. Official letters between military commanders detail the purpose of the campaign. Certain letters commanders and soldiers sent home to families and friends. In addition, confederate women wrote letters to family members on the battlefield and elsewhere on the southern homefront. They wrote these letters to reassure loved ones of their safety and to let them know about the enemys hateful tactics. Memoirsion to avoiding and the problem with memory, i refrain from allowing slaveholding women, Union Soldiers or confederate soldiers from dictating a singular version of events. Wordver possible i use the the ones to corroborate the behavior of the other. The various viewpoints are often not very far apart. Women frequently describe how they mouth off to the enemy soldiers. Union soldiers expressed discussed and dismantle vocal defiance. Devils. Ey deemed she confederate women complained their sheet music and private diaries were stolen by invading soldiers. Not coincidence, those written items appear in northern newspapers after the Union Soldiers who had taken them mailed to them on to loved ones. The integration and multiple 4 of multiple viewpoints creates an attitude of the campaign and help avoid the glorification of one side or the other by exaggerated counts. Taken together, these records offer a full picture of the personal and military aspect of the campaign. Bestshared history may be were told by one of shermans men who witnessed the scene of andruction and well woe assess the march as a black page for American History. Shermans march he recorded in a diary, would long be understood as an an attack on helpless civilian women and children. Taylor described in highly gendered detail how they enter the premises and after robbing the family, deliberately proceed to break jars, dishes, furniture until not more than a dozen half sacks were left and not a single piece of furniture was undamaged. The invading soldiers did not stop of the kitchen and living space. They moved to the private and feminine spaces where they robbed the beds of their bedding , wardrobes of their clothing and cut open mattresses. Even to the one on which the children slept in their cribs. All of this destruction combined to become what taylor himself considered and in human and fiendish act. That continued as the soldiers drove the woman and child from her house. To further humiliate women of this household, they even took the graduating diploma, tour the ribbon and seal from antacid on the floor. It on the floor. This protection proved partially accurate. Although many dont talk about its share the place in history, they do share the place of women in the narrative. Have glossed over confederate womens experiences and active participation in the war. Assuming southern women passively suffered through a horrible ordeal over which they had little control. Scholars spend little time on the complexity of female rebels motivation and experiences. However, a closer look at the march revealed slaveholding women as ardent and active confederates. Their place at the heart of the campaign allows them to understand its implications in ways that many historians have not. One woman noted the significance early. How that march through the feminine foes of georgia will read in history. The cry of those ruined households will be found among the ages. As another confederate woman noted, female rebels did not stand quietly by as noncombatants while Union Soldiers ransacked their homes or it instead, they began a campaign of their own. Valid and that is lifelong confederate women, they would never submit to yankee dominion. In conclusion, i urge you to think of this campaign as a series of confrontations between union men and confederate women. A set of domestic struggles that played out rather similarly in elite households across the lower south. It began when slaveholding women supported secession, encouraged war, and continue to enlist soldiers with items as the war progressed. These women raised money, served as on official enlistment agents. They nurse the wounded. The dead andurn performed many tasks that contributed necessary material and labor to the war effort. Despite their participation in the war, confederate women continue to draw on their belief that the domestic sphere and their gender afforded them some protection. Late 1864, union policy had shifted to allow and encourage the engagement of civilian enemy. The results were a battle over households. In the confrontation with Union Soldiers, the confederates discover their gender and class provided less protection than they had anticipated. Successfully adapting their femininity to one that included a defense of their home, slaveholding women made clear their belief that sherman and his troops were in human, uncivilized, and capable of anything. When they withdrew from confederate households, sherman and his men left more than physical destruction. They left bitterness, hatred and confederate patriotism. The invasion of the domestic sphere during shermans campaign failed to force elite white georgia and carolina women to abandon the mission they helped create. It magnified elite womens confederate patriotism while it reinvigorated their sense of difference between confederates and northerners. The military results are best understood through the logic of 19thcentury gender norms which better explain the actions of confederate soldiers. Shermans march may have been more successful in its in direct attack on confederate soldiers. Although physically removed from the domestic destruction, soldiers in georgia and the carolinas felt the psychological brunt. Southernign destroyed mens sense of honor and their confidence in the ability to defend their homes and family. It consequently forced confederate soldiers to come to grips with the fact they could not protect southern womanhood from war. The marchs of directly resulted from the unions commitment to the civilian war. Thank you. [applause] if anyone has any questions, they can come up to the microphone. I wonder if you could comment on the different realities for the slaveowning women and women slaves as they encounter northern troops. They obviously a very different experience. The prohibitions against touching white womens bodies by the Union Soldiers were not followed by when it came to africanamerican slave women. There are rapes of slave women along the path and often i have found women talking about how they would hide their female there because even though are very few weight rates of white women. Women are so very fearful of it. Bundlehey will themselves up in ugly clothing. One woman talked about wearing glasses so she look the gay married woman so no one would molester. They hide her slaves in a room they wont think they would be discovered since it was a very real problem. Thank you for your talk. I had a similar question. Can you speak to the confrontations between nonelite white women and even nonslaveholding white women. Yesterday i was interested to learn that when sherman got to savannah and the mayor conceded the city that some of the generals actually place their wives under shermans control and a flip was switched and he went back to being a gentleman. I was wondering if you could comment on that. Sherman used savannah as an example is of if you surrender to me, that is how you will be treated. He came in, took control, evacuated everyone. Savanna he wanted to say this is what happens if you surrender. If the whole confederacy surrenders, we can be friends again. Those commanders appealing to him for guards for his wives, they were friendly. A lot of these men had served in the military together before they had gone to school together. A lot of the wealthy families, women will constantly ask for guards to protect against soldiers. Sometimes they are given one. Sometimes it doesnt help because it is for a night. As for the nonslaveholding women, shermans march goes specifically through an area that they generally encounter slaveholding women. That is why it is easier to look at because those women leave a lot of letters. Until they get to North Carolina they are not encountering a lot of of poor white women. In North Carolina he says sherman troops continue to ransacked and burned, but they direct the soldiers to treat with more respect the women of nonslave families because he says they are not the cause of this. We are told not to judge 19thcentury people based on our values so i am rather curious in the 19th century, in other wars during that time in other countries, how would you compare the way women, children and property were treated . Where they better treated, worse treated or comparable to the way the union treated the south . I dont know that i can actually completely deal with that. I would think that to me, it is more surprising these women think that during a war they will be offlimits. What didnt happen during the american revolution, they were never protected just because they were on the home front. Because the civil war is fought in peoples backyards, there is no way to escape this kind of construction and interaction. Thank you for your talk. It was great. You think reconstruction might have been easier if shermans march hadnt happened . That for 10 generations we are going to hate sherman, do you think that psychologically . I dont think reconstruction would be easy to matter what. These women in particular, these are the ones who are the chapters. F udc they are proconfederate even when the confederacy dies. They do cause a lot of the contention and they are the ones who are rewriting the books. This is why i avoid memoirs. Every memoir, all these women spoke back to sherman really nastily even though sherman wasnt there. There is that famous person, everyone knows his name. 50 years later, your memory is in so good. But you remember those horrible experiences. What i have done is look at the letters that happen the day of her the day after and these women are writing and writing and they give you a lot of information. After the war, some of those same women. She ran a ladies release society in columbia and after the war she was the one who founded the udc chapter. These are the ones who feel they are the true protectors of the confederate memory because they fought so hard. Any case itk in wouldve gone easy. If he had left maybe some of the women wouldnt have been the lost cause cap type of thing . You cant really go back and figure it out. I dont like to usually address it. I just think the matter what, this is a horrible war. People arent prepared for it and so these experiences in any form. There were people who werent in shermans march who are equally as dedicated to the confederacy in the 1870s and 1880s. Since you have cast this in a feminist light, if there were confederate soldiers home recuperating from leave or who would been paroled in those households, when shermans troops came through, do you think they wouldve been treated any differently . There are soldiers who are home and they run and hide. If they are found, they will be captured and put in prison. The homefront becomes the domain of women and people you could count an injured soldier as feminized. Families where they have older fathers who arent in the army or very young brothers, these girls are talking about how dad and my brothers are hiding in the swamp to make sure that shermans men dont find them. Have you taken any look at the confederates treatment in similar situation as they came through pennsylvania for instance of the union womens homes . Because im much focused on southern women. There are southern women who say sherman urging they would do such things like that. They dont want when soldiers are in gettysburg, they would be aghast if southern troops treated northern women that way. I dont know what the interactions were. Tell you exactly what happened. I know in the Shenandoah Valley, the union troops with sheridan did similar interactions. I was wondering if you could talk about how Union Soldiers wrote about their experiences in carrying out these actions and related to that, do you ever note in tension between soldiers . Were there soldiers who were trying to stop certain actions or trying to prevent certain behaviors . There are some who are very proud of this behavior, they brag about serving under sherman because it he treats women the way they should be treated. There are other soldiers who are complaining that this is not the way to treat a civilian population. This is not how you deal a wet with women. You get both sides of it and there are some who talk about what they are doing and say it is ok because such and such. Othered the enemy. Sherman was an indian fighter. It is very easy to take these away from being women by saying these are confederates and enemies and look at what they have done. So many years you have been on the battlefield is because of them. You get that tension between different types of cultures and what they believe in. Barefoot, South Carolina. Was justothers farm west of columbia and my mother told me stories of her great grandmother being a little girl when shermans troops came through. There is an interesting story they tell when i was growing up. To secede fromng the union was held at the First Baptist church. When sherman came, it was moved to charleston after that for fear of an epidemic. Ive read it was either fear of him malaria or smallpox. When sherman came to columbia, his intention was to burn the First Baptist church as a symbol. He rode up to the church and the janitor was out front and he said is that the First Baptist church and the janitor said no sir, take a writing go down the street. You will see the First Baptist church. He went down and burned the methodist church. [laughter] every town has its stories. As a methodist i take umbrage. [laughter] it, but didissed you mention or were there documented instances of physical abuse to women and molestation . If so, what was the outcome if the perpetrator was caught . There are some incidents of it and the way i can find them is that a woman mentions it in harsh terms hush terms. Then those Union Soldiers are generally courtmartialed right away. That is beyond the scope of what sherman was willing to allow. We were talking about how controlled sherman is and the order the required. There is an order. It looks like chaos, but when he tells his troops not to do something, to slow down. When the peace treaty assigned to stop, they stop. When they go into North Carolina, they dont go into homes that are wealthy. These soldiers are filing these terms, they are courtmartialed many, butavent found white wealthy women are generally protected from that because that is way out there for 19th century norms. In some ways the wheels are arty coming off the confederacy at this point. There is no military opposition to shermans march that i can see that is worth mentioning. Do the women react to this . They are still convinced they are not on the way out. I notice the war doesnt go on for another eight years. Thept in this sort of courage was not doubled. Have you thought about what would have happened if sherman had gone somewhere else . I dont think about those sort of things because an historian. I have to follow the history. The people of the confederacy, a lot of them did not think the wheels were off. They were confident this was a low spot and it could go on for years. They were not enjoying the war, but they were not concerned about the fact that this was the end. They couldnt say by april we will have to surrender and therefore we should just give up now. For them, they are living in the moment and that moment is they have a chance and they will fight as long as they can with whatever resources they can. Thank you very much. [applause] we will talk about the civil war ships in hampton road. This is coverage on American History tv on cspan3. Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon everyone. And the director of the Civil War Institute. Welcome pleasure to laura, a graduate of penn state university. She spent timeer as an historian at his Berg National park. Stem went on to unc greensboro and we spent some time together. I was her mentor for year before i moved on to West Virginia university. At did complete her masters unc greensboro. She has had a varied career in the field of public history. Her first job was at stratford hall. She is the deputy education director at the Hampton Roads naval museum. Shes been there since 2010. Obviously she was an educator there and does special events. She has also worked at fort monroe museum. Usay she will be speaking to ships. He civil war this is very unusual because we have not done any naval operations. She will be talking about the shipwrecks of the uss cumberland before she comes on stage. Her husband and a book. Have published you can get a copy of it in front of the podium. The title of the book is never call me a hero, a legendary dive bomber pilot remembers the battle of midway. Here she is. Fer. Roduce laura law [applause] afternoon. How is everybody . Good. They went after lunch. I have to start out with a matter of disclosure. At the United States naval museum, everything here is my opinion. It is not endorsed by the u. S. Navy. I think you see why as we go to this talk through this talk today. Things we will focus on his Civil War Battlefields in a different way than you usually do. We are losing the fight to preserve some Civil War Battlefields. You might not know it where here in gettysburg over 6000 acres have been safe. On a front, Civil War Preservation is failing. Maybe next have been plundered, abused to see underwater wreckage as salvage. U. S. Problem shadows all naval wrecks around the world. , then ships and planes final resting place for many u. S. Sailors. Direct said unprotected sit unprotected the wrecks sit unprotected. They are victims of diverse and plunderers who seek to take pieces of the wrecks for themselves. Many said on the bottom of vast oceans. Need specialized diving equipment to get to them, but Civil War Navy wrecks are whereularly vulnerable they said in shallow waters. The story i would like to tell , the ussabout toots cumberland and florida. Ope by the end of us individual appreciate these two. The years, these ships were victim of an intentional plunder. Since the end of the civil war, the u. S. Navy has claimed and held ownership of both. Over the passage of time, we have lacked the resources to protect these aquatic graveyards. In the 20th century, virginia waterman looted and pillaged these shifts under the guise of claiming and fishing. Today, we are on the verge of losing the wrecks, i think on the face of the earth exists this naval action in the atlantic. Plunder of the wrecks was allowed by the organizations entrusted to their care, the u. S. Navy. Sad story,ll this let me introduce you to these ships. It is logical to begin with the uss cumberland. The fable ship sunk during the battle of Hampton Roads. Prior to destruction, cumberland was one of the finest vessels in the federal fleet. It served in the navy for about two decades. In the 1840s, cumberland took part in three mediterranean cruises. Sent56, the navy cumberland to the new York Navy Yard were workers converted it to a fluke of war. After the ships fitting, a cruise off the coast of africa, african slave trade. By the time the civil war began in 1861, cumberland boasted monster guns. They wait 12,000 pounds each. At the time, there are some of the largest pieces of naval artillery in the world. War,eginning of the civil the ship was towed to safety when the confederates took over the shipyard. It engage forces and captured a small number of ships in the harbor. Ononally, cumberland 1862 it met its match. Some of the css regimen. For many months, m f cumberland it n aware of they drilled in preparation for this inevitable encounter. All the training did nothing to help them. That fateful morning as cumberland opened fire with her forward guns come the confederate ironclad responded with a shot that first through the starboard side, killing or wounding nine marines run of the bat. The second shell took out in a shyer entire gun crew. They kept up firing at cumberland is the ship lay helplessly at anchor, unable to bring its virginia moved away from the bow. For several moments, the ironclad cannot execute it self. Sink, itland began to appeared they might think together. The union ship was doomed. All aboard new it. Uninjured gunners left their station. They realized they had an opportunity to retaliate. Despite their losses, the Union Sailors intensify their efforts. The dead were thrown to the port side and the wounded trade below. Remaining guns cruise fire three brightside, but none of them pierced the ironclads honor armor. Morris replied we will sink with our colors flying. The bowels submerge and give the order to abandon ship. Plunged about first into the bottom of the river carries 121 men with her. In the aftermath, cumberland famous. There, two months later, the virginian was intentionally destroyed by confederate forces. Throughout the war, u. S. Solars soldiers and sailors visited the carlin