National Humanities Center
Civil War Home Fronts
a live, online professional development seminar
Focus Questions
How did the total mobilization of the Civil War
affect the Northern and Southern home
fronts?
What was life like for women on the Northern
and Southern home fronts?
What was life like for African Americans on
the Northern and Southern home fronts?
Fitzhugh Brundage
National Humanities Center Fellow
1995-96
William B. Umstead Professor of
History
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill
A Socialist Utopia in the New South:
The Ruskin Colonies in Tennessee
and Georgia, 1894-1901
Lynching in the New South: Georgia
and Virginia, 1880-1939
Scale of the Civil War
When we consider the home front during the Civil War,
it is important to take into account the unprecedented
scale of the American Civil War. Nothing in the
experience of Antebellum Americans prepared them
for a war of the magnitude of the Civil War. The only
pre-Civil War conflict that was comparable was the
Crimea War, fought a few years before the Civil War.
Americans, however, had only the vaguest
understanding of the carnage of that war, which took
place in far-distant Russia, Turkey, and the Baltic
region.
Scope of War’s Impact
Mobilizing for modern war necessarily places great
strains on a society, often accelerating changes
and magnifying tensions already present in a
society. Because the Civil War was long and
bloody, its impact was felt in virtually every corner
of American society.
Civil War Casualties Compared
One way to highlight the immensity of the war
is to compare and contrast the number of
American combatants and casualties in
previous wars with the Civil War.
Revolutionary War
20,000 regulars served in the Continental Army.
An estimated 25,000 American Revolutionaries
died during active military service. About 8,000 of
these deaths were in battle; the other 17,000
deaths were from disease, including about 8,000 12,000 who died while prisoners of war. The
number of Revolutionaries seriously wounded or
disabled by the war has been estimated from
8,500 to 25,000. The total American military
casualty figure was therefore as high as 50,000.
War of 1812
At the beginning of the war, there were 7,000
regulars in the Army. By the end of the conflict the
ranks had swollen to almost 40,000. Approximately
2,260 were killed in action and another 4,505
wounded. Approximately 17,000 died from disease.
Indian Wars
The various Indian wars of the early nineteenth
century, including the three Seminole Wars,
claimed fewer than 1,000 casualties. At any
given time there were perhaps 10,000 regulars
engaged in the Indian wars.
Mexican War
For most Americans at the time of the Civil War, the
Mexican War was their most recent experience with
war and combat. During the Mexican War, 78,700
soldiers served. Of these 1,733 were killed in
battle, and another 13,271 died from disease, etc.
4,152 were wounded.
U.S. Civil War
Perhaps as many as 4 million men fought in the
Civil War. 2.5 million men served in the Union
Army. There are no definitive number of the
strength of the Confederate States Army.
Confederate war department reports recorded
326,768 men in 1861, 449,439 in 1862, and
464,646 in 1863 before declining to 358,692 in
1865. Based on these totals, the total number of
men who fought for the Confederacy has been
estimated between 1.2 and 1.4 million.
U. S. Civil War
Of the troops who fought for the Union, 110,070
died in combat and an additional 249,458 of other
causes. 275,175 were wounded.
Of the troops who fought for the Confederacy,
74,524 died in combat, and 124,000 of other
causes. An estimated 137,000 + were wounded
while in the ranks.
U. S. Civil War
In starkest terms, approximately 4 million out
of an American population of 31.5 million
fought in the war, and perhaps as many as a
million of these soldiers died or were
wounded.
U. S. Civil War
To mobilize a population to wage war and
to endure casualties in this scale,
arguably, was the greatest challenge that
Presidents Lincoln and Davis confronted.
U.S. Civil War
Because of deeply rooted animosity to standing
armies in the United States, both the Union and
the Confederacy initially had to rely on voluntary
support for the war effort. Even when both
governments eventually adopted conscription to
fill their armies, they insisted that their publics –
the home fronts -- enthusiastically supported the
war.
Response of Women
How women in the Union and the Confederacy
responded to the war is especially revealing of
the pressures of modern war on the home front.
Just what were the appropriate roles for women
during war? What sacrifices could women be
expected to make? To what extent were women
expected/allowed to deviate from inherited
codes of feminine conduct?
What was life like for women on the northern and southern home
fronts?
•
In what capacities were women expected to contribute to the war?
How did women justify the roles that they assumed?
•
In reading Sarah Morgan’s diary, we get an interesting
perspective on female Confederate patriotism. Did Morgan
distinguish between the expectations of patriotic behavior
according to gender? What did she expect of “loyal” southern
white women? Of southern white men? And what were her views
of the enemy?
•
To what extent were Gail Hamilton’s views of female sacrifice
consonant with Sarah Morgan’s? In other words, were the
expectations of feminine patriotism and sacrifice in both the Union
and the Confederacy?
•
How much should we make of the “Bread Riots” in the South?
Were they symptomatic of a deep crisis in the patriotism of
Confederate women?
A Confederate Girl’s Diary
The diary entries of Sarah Morgan of Louisiana
after the capture of southern Louisiana by Union
forces in 1862 offer us a glimpse into how one
white southern woman negotiated her conflicting
roles as a Confederate, a lady, and an American.
Sarah Morgan Dawson, A Confederate Girl’s Diary, 1913
May 9, 1862
If we girls of Baton Rouge had been at the landing, instead of the
men, that Yankee would never have insulted us by flying his flag in
our faces! We would have opposed his landing except under a flag
of truce, but the men let him alone, and he even found a poor
Dutchman willing to show him the road! . . . .
I wear one pinned to my bosom - not a duster, but a little flag; the
man who says take it off will have to pull it off for himself; the man
who dares attempt it - well! a pistol in my pocket fills up the gap. I
am capable, too.
O! if I was only a man! Then I could don the breeches, and slay
them with a will! If some few Southern women were in the ranks,
they could set the men an example they would not blush to follow.
Pshaw! there are no women here! We are all men!
Sarah Morgan Dawson, A Confederate Girl’s Diary, 1913
May 14, 1862
Shall I acknowledge that the people we so recently called our brothers
are unworthy of consideration, and are liars, cowards, dogs? Not I! If
they conquer us, I acknowledge them as a superior race; I will not say
that we were conquered by cowards, for where would that place us? It
will take a brave people to gain us, and that the Northerners
undoubtedly are. I would scorn to have an inferior foe; I fight only my
equals. These women may acknowledge that cowards have won
battles in which their brothers were engaged, but I, I will ever say mine
fought against brave men, and won the day. Which is most honorable?
I don't believe in Secession, but I do in Liberty. I want the South to
conquer, dictate its own terms, and go back to the Union, for I believe
that, apart, inevitable ruin awaits both. It is a rope of sand, this
Confederacy, founded on the doctrine of Secession, and will not last
many years - not five.
Sarah Morgan Dawson, A Confederate Girl’s Diary, 1913
May 9, 1862
If we girls of Baton Rouge had been at the landing, instead of the
men, that Yankee would never have insulted us by flying his flag in
our faces! We would have opposed his landing except under a flag
of truce, but the men let him alone, and he even found a poor
Dutchman willing to show him the road! . . . .
I wear one pinned to my bosom - not a duster, but a little flag; the
man who says take it off will have to pull it off for himself; the man
who dares attempt it - well! a pistol in my pocket fills up the gap. I
am capable, too.
O! if I was only a man! Then I could don the breeches, and slay
them with a will! If some few Southern women were in the ranks,
they could set the men an example they would not blush to follow.
Pshaw! there are no women here! We are all men!
Sarah Morgan Dawson, A Confederate Girl’s Diary,
1913
May 17, 1862
O my discarded carving-knife, laid aside under the
impression that these men were gentlemen. We will be
close friends once more. And if you must have a sheath,
perhaps I may find one for you in the heart of the first man
who attempts to Butlerize me. I never dreamed of kissing
any man save my father and brothers. And why any one
should care to kiss any one else, I fail to understand. And I
do not propose to learn to make exceptions.
Sarah Morgan Dawson, A Confederate Girl’s
Diary, 1913
June 10, 1862
It made me ashamed to contrast the quiet, gentlemanly,
liberal way these volunteers spoke of us and our cause, with
the rabid, fanatical, abusive violence of our own female
Secession declaimers.
Sarah Morgan Dawson, A Confederate Girl’s
Diary, 1913
June 16, 1862
I would put aside woman's trash, take up woman's duty, and
I would stand by some forsaken man and bid him Godspeed
as he closes his dying eyes. That is woman's mission! and
not Preaching and Politics. I say I would, yet here I sit! O for
liberty! the liberty that dares do what conscience dictates,
and scorns all smaller rules! If I could help these dying men!
“A Call to My Country-Women”
Gail Hamilton’s “A Call to My Countrywomen” is
an equally striking counterpoint to Morgan’s
diary. Hamilton exploits every possible rhetorical
device to appeal to the women of the North. In
what ways does her appeal parrot or differ from
the ideas that Morgan expressed in her diary?
A CALL TO MY COUNTRY-WOMEN
Gail Hamilton
(Mary Abigail Dodge)
Atlantic Monthly 6 (March 1863)
. . . If women, weak or strong, consider that praying is all
they can or ought to do for their country, and so settle down
contented with that, they make as great a mistake as if they
did not pray at all. True, women cannot fight, and there is
no call for any great number of female nurses;
notwithstanding this, I believe, that, to-day, the issue of this
war depends quite as much upon American women as upon
American men, and depends, too, not upon the few who
write, but upon the many who do not.
A CALL TO MY COUNTRY-WOMEN
Gail Hamilton
(Mary Abigail Dodge)
Atlantic Monthly 6 (March 1863)
When I read of the Rebels fighting bareheaded, bare-footed,
haggard, and unshorn, in rags and filth, fighting bravely,
heroically, successfully, I am ready to make a burnt-offering
of our stacks of clothing. I feel and fear that we must come
down, as they have done, to a recklessness of all
incidentals, down to the rough and rugged fastnesses
(remote and secluded places) of life, down to the very gates
of death itself, before we shall be ready and worthy to win
victories.
A CALL TO MY COUNTRY-WOMEN
Gail Hamilton
(Mary Abigail Dodge)
Atlantic Monthly 6 (March 1863)
Take not acquiescently, but joyfully, the spoiling of your
goods. Not only look poverty in the face with high disdain,
but embrace it with gladness and welcome. The loss is but
for a moment; the gain is for all time. Go farther than this.
Consecrate to a holy cause not only the incidentals of life, but
life itself. Father, husband, child—I do not say, Give them up
to toil, exposure, suffering, death, without a murmur—that
implies reluctance. I rather say, Urge them to the offering; fill
them with sacred fury; fire them with irresistible desire;
strengthen them to heroic will.
A CALL TO MY COUNTRY-WOMEN
Gail Hamilton
(Mary Abigail Dodge)
Atlantic Monthly 6 (March 1863)
Therefore let us have done at once and forever with paltry
considerations, with talk of despondency and darkness. Let
compromise, submission, and every form of dishonorable
peace be not so much as named among us. Tolerate no
coward’s voice or pen or eye. Wherever the serpents head
is raised, strike it down. Measure every man by the
standard of manhood.
By 1863 the rhetoric of sacrifice no longer could assuage the mounting frustration
and anger on the home front. When scattered bread riots flared up in Richmond
and elsewhere observers and public officials struggled to make sense of the unrest.
African American Response
Complicating the mobilization for the war in both
the North and the South were African Americans,
who had their own hopes for the war’s outcome.
What insights does A. Jackson’s testimony give
us about how blacks in the South responded to
the war?
Testimony of Alonzo Jackson
An African American merchant in South Carolina
Yes, about 8 months before Georgetown was occupied
by Union soldiers, while I was in the freighting business
on my flat boat on Mingo Creek (up Black River) about
30 or 40 miles from Georgetown by water, three white
men came near the boat which was at the bank of the
river. I was on the boat with only one person, a colored
man (in my employ named Henry). As soon as the three
white men saw we were colored men they came to the
boat and said, “We are Yankee soldiers, and have
escaped from the rebel ‘stockade’ at Florence. We are
your friends; can’t you do something for us, we are
nearly perished.”
As soon as I saw them, before they spoke, I knew they
were Yankee soldiers by their clothing. They were all
private soldiers, so they told me. I invited them to come
on the boat and told them I would hurry and cook for
them, which I did and gave it to them in my boat. As
soon as they entered the boat I shoved off from land and
anchored in the creek about sixty feet from shore. I was
loading cord wood in my boat when the soldiers came
and had completed my load within about four cords. I did
not wait to take it all, fearing that someone else might
come and catch these Yankees. Neither of the three
soldiers ordered me to take them in the boat or made
any threats. They did not go in the boat or secure it in
any way so that I could not leave it. They only entered
the boat after they had told me who they were (as
stated) and when I invited them. They were very weak
and had no weapons. They had no shoes on. It was then
winter weather, and cold.
The three Yankees did not suggest anything for
me to do for them except to feed them, and
wanted to get to the gun boats. They did not
know where the gun boats were. I did, and I told
them I would take them where they could get to
the gun boats unmolested. The soldiers did not
pay or give me anything, or promise anything to
me at any time, and I have never received
anything for any service rendered to any Union
soldiers. They did not threaten me or use any
violence. They were very friendly and glad to get
into such good hands. They showed that they
felt very grateful.
In about three days’ time we came to “North Island”
(about twelve miles from Georgetown) which I then knew
was in possession of the Union forces. I did not pass
Georgetown by daylight for fear of being stopped by the
rebels who had “pickets” all along the shore to stop all
boats from going below. In the night I floated with the
ebb tide (without being seen) to “North Island.” I got
there in the night and landed the three soldiers in my
small boat. I showed them the direction to cross the
Island so as to get to the gun boats. I knew there were
many of the gun boat people on the shore there at that
time. I saw the three soldiers go as I directed. I never
saw or heard from any of the three soldiers afterwards,
but through a colored man named “Miller” (who was on
the shore near the gunboats) learned about three
soldiers had got to the fleet. “Miller” told me this about
two weeks after I took the three soldiers. He saw them
and described them so that I was certain he had seen
the same three soldiers safe in the protection of the gun
boats.
Slavery as Cornerstone
Given that Vice President Alexander Stephens
had described slavery as the cornerstone of the
Confederacy in 1861, how and why did
Confederate General Cleburne justify
emancipating slaves who fought for the
Confederacy in 1864?
Home Front Fault Lines
Cleburne acknowledged the moral “high ground”
that the Union occupied with its war against
slavery. And yet only a year earlier New York
City had erupted in rioting against the draft and
African Americans. Just as the bread riots of
1863 drew attention to fault lines in the
Confederacy, so too the riots in New York
exposed deep divisions there. What were those
divisions according to the editorialists of
Harper’s Weekly?
What was life like for African Americans on the northern and southern
home fronts?
•
Alonzo Jackson’s testimony is very matter of the fact. Yet, the actions he
took reveal a great deal about the response of southern African
Americans to their circumstances during the Civil War. Is there anything
in particular that strikes you as noteworthy or surprising about either
Jackson’s actions or his description of them?
•
Do you think Jackson’s actions are the sort of behavior that prompted
Cleburne to offer his proposal for Confederate emancipation?
•
How different do you think the northern motivation for arming African
Americans was than Cleburne’s motivation? In other words, did the
same exigencies that drove the North to arm blacks subsequently prod
the South to contemplate doing so? How likely was it that blacks would
have fought for the Confederacy?
•
The New York Draft Riots are a conspicuous reminder of how
circumscribed “freedom” was for blacks in the North. From the
perspective of the editorialists of Harper’s Weekly, what did the riots
reveal about New Yorkers?
January 2, 1864
COMMANDING GENERAL, THE CORPS, DIVISION, BRIGADE, AND REGIMENTAL
COMMANDERS OF THE ARMY of TENNESSEE:
GENERAL:
We can give but a faint idea when we say it means the loss of all we now hold most sacred—
slaves and all other personal property, lands, homesteads, liberty, justice, safety, pride,
manhood. It means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that
our youth will be trained by Northern school teachers; will learn from Northern school books
their version of the war; will be impressed by all the influences of history and education to
regard our gallant dead as traitors, our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision. It means
the crushing of Southern manhood, the hatred of our former slaves, who will, on a spy
system, be our secret police.
The enemy has three sources of supply: First, his own motley population; secondly, our
slaves; and thirdly, Europeans whose hearts are fired into a crusade against us by fictitious
pictures of the atrocities of slavery, and who meet no hindrance from their Governments in
such enterprise, because these Governments are equally antagonistic to the institution. . . .
Apart from the assistance that home and foreign prejudice against slavery has given to the
North, slavery is a source of great strength to the enemy in a purely military point of view, by
supplying him with an army from our granaries; but it is our most vulnerable point, a continued
embarrassment, and in some respects an insidious weakness.
As between the loss of independence and the loss of slavery, we assume that every patriot
will freely give up the latter—give up the negro slave rather than be a slave himself.
It [enlisting slaves to fight for the Confederacy] would remove forever all selfish taint from our
cause and place independence above every question of property.
Harper’s Weekly
July 25, 1863
The Draft
The leaders and principal actors in the affair were boys—beardless
youths of fifteen to eighteen. Behind these, and seemingly operating as a
mere reserve force, was a body of men—operatives in foundries and
factories, laborers, stablemen, etc. —who did the murdering of
policemen, the gutting of houses, the firing of dwellings, etc., after the
boys had opened the battle with volleys of stones. In all the crowds there
was a fair sprinkling of women, not young, but married women, who were
probably roused to fury by the fear of having their husbands taken from
them by the draft. This kind of mixed crowd, though often good-humored
and apt to be easily managed by a skillful leader, is likewise prone to the
wildest excesses of passion and brutality. The boys and men invariably
get drunk at an early stage of the proceedings; the women appear to
become equally intoxicated with excitement; and all together commit
crimes from which every individual in the crowd would probably shrink if
he were alone. Such crowds are so cowardly
Harper’s Weekly
August 1, 1863
The Riots
The outbreak was the natural consequence of pernicious teachings widely
scattered among the ignorant and excitable populace of a great city; and the
only possible mode of dealing with it was stern and bloody repression. Had
the mob been assailed with grape and canister on Monday, when the first
disturbance took place, it would have been a saving of life and property.
Had the resistance been more general, and the bloodshed more profuse
than it was, on Thursday,
Some newspapers dwell upon the fact that the rioters were uniformly Irish,
and hence argue that our trouble arises from the perversity of the Irish race.
. . . Turbulence is no exclusive attribute of the Irish character: it is common
to all mobs in all countries. It happens in this city that, in our working
classes, the Irish element largely preponderates over all others, and if the
populace acts as a populace Irishmen are naturally prominent therein. It
happens, also, that, from the limited opportunities which the Irish enjoy for
education in their own country, they are more easily misled by knaves, and
made the tools of politicians, when they come here, than Germans or men
of other races. The impulsiveness of the Celt, likewise, prompts him to be
foremost in every outburst. . . .
An Open Letter
MY DEAR FRIEND,—YOU are a German and a Jew, and you have come
to make your living in a foreign land, of which Christianity is the professed
religion. You have no native, no political, no religious sympathy with this
country. You are here solely to make money, and your only wish is to make
money as fast as possible. You neither know our history nor understand
our Government; but, believing that all men are selfish and mean, nothing
is absurder to your mind than the American doctrine of popular
government based upon equal rights.
You are the material out of which despotisms are made. It is upon such
people as you that the King of Prussia counts when he deliberately
destroys the constitutional rights of his subjects. And whatever in this
country is despotic, mean, and repugnant to the great and fundamental
democratic doctrine of equal rights before the law, receives your hearty
sympathy and support. The country you left did not regret your coming
away; the country in which you trade will not mourn your departure
Focus Questions
How did the total mobilization of the Civil War
affect the Northern and Southern home
fronts?
What was life like for women on the Northern
and Southern home fronts?
What was life like for African Americans on
the Northern and Southern home fronts?
Final slide.
Thank you.