All Things Altered: Women in the Wake of Civil War and ReconstructionFew readers of Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind remained unmoved by how the strong-willed Scarlett O'Hara tried to rebuild Tara after the Civil War ended. This book examines the problems that Southern women faced during the Reconstruction Era, in Part I as mothers, wives, daughters or sisters of men burdened with financial difficulties and the radical Republican regime, and in Part II with specific illustrations of their tribulations through the letters and diaries of five different women. A lonely widow with young children, Sally Randle Perry is struggling to get her life back together, following the death of her husband in the war. Virginia Caroline Smith Aiken, a wife and mother, born into affluence and security, struggles to emerge from the financial and psychological problems of the postwar world. Susan Darden, also a wife and mother, details the uncertainties and frustrations of her life in Fayette, Mississippi. Jo Gillis tells the sad tale of a young mother straining to cope with the depressed circumstances enveloping most ministers in the aftermath of the war. As the wife of a Methodist Episcopal minister in the Alabama Conference she sacrifices herself into an early grave in an attempt to further her husband's career. Inability to collect a debt three times that of the $10,000 debt her father owed brought Anna Clayton Logan, her eleven brothers and sisters, and her parents face-to-face with starvation. |
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... Union, but fearing a return to power of the old planter caste, Northerners set up formidable hurdles in reallocating them voting rights and permitting them to be seated in Congress. The capricious diversity and the significant ...
... Union takeover, rendered reliable war news a rarity. Rumor abounded. Even before a rumor could be assimilated, new information had superseded the original, soon to be followed by another contradiction, attended in short order by yet ...
... Union. Never!" Although in time countless recalcitrant Southerners were compelled to accept their fate, they somehow were unable to envision a permanent return to the Union. Early in the war, in May 1862, the Federal takeover of New ...
... Union.' To see them willing to grasp the hands of those who have killed our brothers & friends. Those who would take away our honor, our all."40 Amanda Worthing- ton's sentiments were even more vitriolic: "Rather than go back into a union ...
... Union orders, and as the funeral commemoration for Lincoln solemnly wound its way through the streets Rachel sourly commented, "I thought the procession never would get done passing."65 A Missouri woman recounted a gruesome story of how ...