Womens War

As Stephanie McCurry points out in this gem of a book, many historians who view the American Civil War as a peoples war nevertheless neglect the actions of half the people. James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom A stunning portrayal of a tragedy endured and survived by women. David W. Blight, author of Frederick Douglass The award-winning author of Confederate Reckoninga finalist for the Pulitzer Prizechallenges the idea that women are outside of war by revealing their transformative and long-neglected role in the Civil War. We think of war as a mans world, but women have always played active roles in times of violence and been left to pick up the pieces in societies decimated by war. In this groundbreaking reconsideration of the Civil War, the award-winning author of Confederate Reckoning invites us to see Americas bloodiest conflict not just as pitting brother against brother but as a womans war. When the war broke out, Union soldiers assumed Confederate women would be innocent noncombatants. Experience soon challenged this simplistic belief. Through a trio of dramatic stories, Stephanie McCurry reveals the vital and sometimes confounding roles women played on and off the battlefield. We meet Clara Judd, a Confederate spy whose imprisonment for treason sparked heated controversy, defying the principle of civilian immunity and leading to lasting changes in the laws of war. Hundreds of thousands of enslaved women escaped across Union lines, upending emancipation policies that extended only to enslaved men. The Unions response was to classify fugitive black women as soldiers wives, regardless of whether they were marriedoffering them some protection but placing new obstacles on their path to freedom. In the wars aftermath, the Confederate grande dame Gertrude Thomas wrestled with her loss of status and of her former slaves. War, emancipation, and economic devastation affected her family intimately, and through her life McCurry helps us see how fundamental the changes of Reconstruction were. Womens War dismantles the long-standing fiction that women are outside of war and shows that they were indispensable actors in the Civil War, as they have beenand continue to bein all wars.