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Tara Revisited: Women, War, & the Plantation Legend
This volume cuts through romantic myth, combining period photographs and illustrations with new documentary sources to tell the real story of Southern women during the Civil War. Drawing from a wealth of poignant letters, diaries, slave narratives, and other accounts, Catherine Clinton provides a vivid social and cultural history of the diverse communities of Southern women during the Civil War.
240 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1995
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343 people want to read
About the author
Catherine Clinton
58 books69 followersProfessor of history at Queen's University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Specializes in American history, African-American history, the Civil War, and women's history. Previously taught at Brandeis and Harvard universities. Born in 1952, grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. Studied sociology and history at Harvard, earned a master's degree from Sussex and a doctorate from Princeton.
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January 11, 2020
This book is honestly an insult.
While easy to read and interesting, this is just a fail on every other level. This is not a look at the civil war from the view of southern women both black and white.
Instead this book primarily focuses, at least 70-75%, on southern white women who held black people in bondage. There’s maybe 5-10% about middle class southern white women who became nurses or were the wives of overseers. Overseers wives, we know from The Slave Narratives, held a lot of power over the lives of enslaved peoples.
I’d say maybe 20% of the book deals with black women during the Civil War. Of that 20%, a minuscule amount of the narrative is actually from the pov of black enslaved women. A sizable portion is reflective of how southern white slave holding women were impacted by the actions and choices of black folks during this period. How these white women were frightened and inconvenienced by the growing freedoms of enslaved blacks. The author very much cherry picked the Slave Narratives as a source.
Even the language used in the black women sections was condescending and racialized. There’s a section on enslaved blacks being ‘self sufficient’ as in growing food and feeding themselves. White slave holders being self sufficient was the true surprise, as they had needed assistance to provide for themselves, hence the institution of chattel slavery. White slave holding women didn’t even feed their own infants, they had zero self sufficiency. Most enslaved people’s were responsible for growing their own food in addition to working sunrise to sunset, blacks were always self sufficient as in their labor more than provided for their consumption needs. West Africans were amazingly self sufficient and highly knowledgeable regardless of nation which is why they were attractive enough to Europeans to create the chattel slave trade in the first place. The author’s racism is cringe worthy.
White women on slave owning plantations: whether the wife or daughter of the owner or the overseer had a lot of control over the lives and punishment of the enslaved. Wives of slave holders hung children by their thumbs in closets, implored various other means of corporal punishment as well as deprivation and emotional punishment on enslaved peoples as young as infants. White women were often the instigator of sales and the break up of families. All of this is in the Slave Narratives. As well as various individually published slave narratives. Unfortunately the author did not choose to tell black enslaved women’s history where it incriminated white slave holding women or the confederacy.
Instead the sections on black enslaved women are told from primarily the pov of how white women are impacted by the enslaved. For example black men leaving and other enslaved families walking off after the war gets going which intensifies after the Emancipation Proclamation. How white women were impacted and felt about that as they were left in charge by their husbands.
At no point is it addressed that this is the best thing to happen to black people in the US since the first West African arrived here in what would become the US in chains. History tells us black folks left to seek out family members: lost parents, siblings, spouses and most especially children. Many left to take advantage of freedom or to go with their spouses and keep families together. Whole enslaved families but mostly individuals joined ‘contraband’ camps and later the Union Army, the men fought and the women cooked. No doubt this was a very exciting and anxiety provoking time for black women. There very world was being made anew. For black folks this is the war of independence.
I can not imagine the pride, joy, honor and happiness black enslaved women must’ve felt seeing black men in Union uniforms. This is not really discussed. Only from white women’s pov and as if black union soldiers existed solely to intimidate racist white southern women. Here’s the thing though, white women are responsible for their own racism and bigotry so if they felt fear at seeing armed black union soldiers, that should not be treated as a valid fear. Because it is not. Historically white women have always caused considerably more harm to black folks, than ever they have to them. If confused by this, Google Emmett Till and how his accuser lied and is still free to this day.
This book even backs up that more sexual assaults are reported against black enslaved women than white slave holding women by union soldiers. No mention made of southern white wen and women sexually assaulting black men, women and children for centuries, and how this must have continued amongst the confederacy during the war.
The author wants to paint southern white slave holding women as sympathetic and, well, they are not. White men weren’t the only ones who participated in the crimes against humanity that occurred during chattel slavery. White southern slave holding women are as complicit as their respective husbands, brothers, father’s, uncles, sons, etc. This text simply acknowledges that black enslaved women existed in the confederacy and stipulates, erroneously, that they were ‘managed’ not held by white women.
Sparingly is the term ‘white women’ used to designate white women in this text. Instead terms like ‘south carolina women on plantations’ which the reader is supposed to understand means white women. As if no black women existed on south carolina plantations or were they not women? In contrast black women are always identified, as African American, I prefer black. AA may have been more commonly used academically when this was published.
This book presents the confederacy: women and soldiers as heroes and brave souls. With the Union as tyrannical human rights violators who are prone to antagonistic violence.
The only problem is this books promises to give a ‘diverse’ view of the Civil War. This is a white southern slave holding view. That’s not at all diverse. What about poor white women who had husband’s that held no enslaved peoples? How did they feel watching rich slave holding white men buy their way out of serving in the Confederacy when their husbands had to fight? How did jewish southern women feel? Other woc living in the South? This book has an extremely narrow view.
White Confederates, women or not, were human rights violators and treasonous losers.
Every single white person who held enslaved peoples or participated in the chattel slave trade was a human rights violator and monster. As were blacks and other poc who profited off of the chattel slave trade.
That doesn’t mean those white slave holding women deserved to be assaulted by Union Soldiers, no one deserves that. However you can’t tell the story of enslaved black women without talking about how white women who held them in bondage used and abused them. I understand that makes it hard to make these white women sympathetic. That is as it should be. Southern white slave holding women are more than the crimes they participated in but they can’t be removed from their crimes wholesale. That would be a misrepresentation of actual history and disrespectful to their black enslaved victims.
To sum this up, white feminism writes a racist history of white slave holding women on plantations during the civil war. Tara is not revisited, this upholds much of the racist misconceptions that occur as a result of the ridiculous novel and movie, gone with the wind.
While easy to read and interesting, this is just a fail on every other level. This is not a look at the civil war from the view of southern women both black and white.
Instead this book primarily focuses, at least 70-75%, on southern white women who held black people in bondage. There’s maybe 5-10% about middle class southern white women who became nurses or were the wives of overseers. Overseers wives, we know from The Slave Narratives, held a lot of power over the lives of enslaved peoples.
I’d say maybe 20% of the book deals with black women during the Civil War. Of that 20%, a minuscule amount of the narrative is actually from the pov of black enslaved women. A sizable portion is reflective of how southern white slave holding women were impacted by the actions and choices of black folks during this period. How these white women were frightened and inconvenienced by the growing freedoms of enslaved blacks. The author very much cherry picked the Slave Narratives as a source.
Even the language used in the black women sections was condescending and racialized. There’s a section on enslaved blacks being ‘self sufficient’ as in growing food and feeding themselves. White slave holders being self sufficient was the true surprise, as they had needed assistance to provide for themselves, hence the institution of chattel slavery. White slave holding women didn’t even feed their own infants, they had zero self sufficiency. Most enslaved people’s were responsible for growing their own food in addition to working sunrise to sunset, blacks were always self sufficient as in their labor more than provided for their consumption needs. West Africans were amazingly self sufficient and highly knowledgeable regardless of nation which is why they were attractive enough to Europeans to create the chattel slave trade in the first place. The author’s racism is cringe worthy.
White women on slave owning plantations: whether the wife or daughter of the owner or the overseer had a lot of control over the lives and punishment of the enslaved. Wives of slave holders hung children by their thumbs in closets, implored various other means of corporal punishment as well as deprivation and emotional punishment on enslaved peoples as young as infants. White women were often the instigator of sales and the break up of families. All of this is in the Slave Narratives. As well as various individually published slave narratives. Unfortunately the author did not choose to tell black enslaved women’s history where it incriminated white slave holding women or the confederacy.
Instead the sections on black enslaved women are told from primarily the pov of how white women are impacted by the enslaved. For example black men leaving and other enslaved families walking off after the war gets going which intensifies after the Emancipation Proclamation. How white women were impacted and felt about that as they were left in charge by their husbands.
At no point is it addressed that this is the best thing to happen to black people in the US since the first West African arrived here in what would become the US in chains. History tells us black folks left to seek out family members: lost parents, siblings, spouses and most especially children. Many left to take advantage of freedom or to go with their spouses and keep families together. Whole enslaved families but mostly individuals joined ‘contraband’ camps and later the Union Army, the men fought and the women cooked. No doubt this was a very exciting and anxiety provoking time for black women. There very world was being made anew. For black folks this is the war of independence.
I can not imagine the pride, joy, honor and happiness black enslaved women must’ve felt seeing black men in Union uniforms. This is not really discussed. Only from white women’s pov and as if black union soldiers existed solely to intimidate racist white southern women. Here’s the thing though, white women are responsible for their own racism and bigotry so if they felt fear at seeing armed black union soldiers, that should not be treated as a valid fear. Because it is not. Historically white women have always caused considerably more harm to black folks, than ever they have to them. If confused by this, Google Emmett Till and how his accuser lied and is still free to this day.
This book even backs up that more sexual assaults are reported against black enslaved women than white slave holding women by union soldiers. No mention made of southern white wen and women sexually assaulting black men, women and children for centuries, and how this must have continued amongst the confederacy during the war.
The author wants to paint southern white slave holding women as sympathetic and, well, they are not. White men weren’t the only ones who participated in the crimes against humanity that occurred during chattel slavery. White southern slave holding women are as complicit as their respective husbands, brothers, father’s, uncles, sons, etc. This text simply acknowledges that black enslaved women existed in the confederacy and stipulates, erroneously, that they were ‘managed’ not held by white women.
Sparingly is the term ‘white women’ used to designate white women in this text. Instead terms like ‘south carolina women on plantations’ which the reader is supposed to understand means white women. As if no black women existed on south carolina plantations or were they not women? In contrast black women are always identified, as African American, I prefer black. AA may have been more commonly used academically when this was published.
This book presents the confederacy: women and soldiers as heroes and brave souls. With the Union as tyrannical human rights violators who are prone to antagonistic violence.
The only problem is this books promises to give a ‘diverse’ view of the Civil War. This is a white southern slave holding view. That’s not at all diverse. What about poor white women who had husband’s that held no enslaved peoples? How did they feel watching rich slave holding white men buy their way out of serving in the Confederacy when their husbands had to fight? How did jewish southern women feel? Other woc living in the South? This book has an extremely narrow view.
White Confederates, women or not, were human rights violators and treasonous losers.
Every single white person who held enslaved peoples or participated in the chattel slave trade was a human rights violator and monster. As were blacks and other poc who profited off of the chattel slave trade.
That doesn’t mean those white slave holding women deserved to be assaulted by Union Soldiers, no one deserves that. However you can’t tell the story of enslaved black women without talking about how white women who held them in bondage used and abused them. I understand that makes it hard to make these white women sympathetic. That is as it should be. Southern white slave holding women are more than the crimes they participated in but they can’t be removed from their crimes wholesale. That would be a misrepresentation of actual history and disrespectful to their black enslaved victims.
To sum this up, white feminism writes a racist history of white slave holding women on plantations during the civil war. Tara is not revisited, this upholds much of the racist misconceptions that occur as a result of the ridiculous novel and movie, gone with the wind.
March 6, 2018
Genre: History, Civil war era
I was disappointed in the book, I expected it to be based on actual history based on diaries and letters of both white and black women who lived in the antebellum south during and after the Civil War as indicated in the preview synopsis.
Instead, the premise of the book seems to be debunking the myth of "Gone With the Wind". The book demonstrates bias to anything southern.
The author presents in her book the idea that southern women who were wives of slave-holding plantation owners considered themselves overwhelmed by the running of the plantation household. Her assumption, is of their being "caged" or trapped, similar to slaves, because they did not realize what they would be responsible for once they were married. Surely, as daughters of a southern plantation owners, these young women would have seen their mother's managing a similar household. In addition, chances are, someone (usually the groom's mother or a female relative) would have already been managing the new husband's plantation. There would have been no need to take over the daily administration of the household, someone would have already been in place as the mistress of the household.
It was a sad time in American history. The women endured deaths of the men in their family on the battlefield and many were displaced from their homes by the Northern army invasion. Slaves owed no allegiance to the mistress of the plantation. They left in great numbers. Over 200,000 black men alone fought in the Civil war for the north, it must have been devastating to watch your way of life disappear forever. Loss of wealth and material goods along with starvation created by the war had devastating consequences for the isolated women.
Three stars for the many photographs and illustrations contained in the book. I would like to have seen more history on the role played by slave women and poor white women during the war. We are all aware that "Gone With the Wind" was a work of fiction, it was never meant to be viewed as a nonfiction recorded history of the south.
ARC courtesy of the author and publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.
I was disappointed in the book, I expected it to be based on actual history based on diaries and letters of both white and black women who lived in the antebellum south during and after the Civil War as indicated in the preview synopsis.
Instead, the premise of the book seems to be debunking the myth of "Gone With the Wind". The book demonstrates bias to anything southern.
The author presents in her book the idea that southern women who were wives of slave-holding plantation owners considered themselves overwhelmed by the running of the plantation household. Her assumption, is of their being "caged" or trapped, similar to slaves, because they did not realize what they would be responsible for once they were married. Surely, as daughters of a southern plantation owners, these young women would have seen their mother's managing a similar household. In addition, chances are, someone (usually the groom's mother or a female relative) would have already been managing the new husband's plantation. There would have been no need to take over the daily administration of the household, someone would have already been in place as the mistress of the household.
It was a sad time in American history. The women endured deaths of the men in their family on the battlefield and many were displaced from their homes by the Northern army invasion. Slaves owed no allegiance to the mistress of the plantation. They left in great numbers. Over 200,000 black men alone fought in the Civil war for the north, it must have been devastating to watch your way of life disappear forever. Loss of wealth and material goods along with starvation created by the war had devastating consequences for the isolated women.
Three stars for the many photographs and illustrations contained in the book. I would like to have seen more history on the role played by slave women and poor white women during the war. We are all aware that "Gone With the Wind" was a work of fiction, it was never meant to be viewed as a nonfiction recorded history of the south.
ARC courtesy of the author and publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.
August 21, 2013
I knew quite a bit about the plantation system and it's history, but I learned plenty in this book too. Like many of us their was always something of the romantic tone when one thought of the old South. Even with Gone with the Wind, the picnics, large parties, huge houses, hoop dresses and corsets, made it seem like everything was rosy until the Civil War. Even slavery was given short shift, as Mmamie was treated as one of the family, there was no cruelty going on in Tara. Well most of us know now that much of the old South was not all beauty and light.
What was different about this book, was that much of it focused on the roles of women, black and white. I never knew that plantation wives had it so hard, they too were slaves though in a more luxurious setting, but trapped all the same. Of course, there were some who were fortunate enough to not live on the plantation but instead live in a house in town. The black women I think I knew more about, but it was interesting to see the many different ways the white women lived, and their feeling toward this.
Loved the pictures, still love the idea of Ol' South, even with all its blemishes and faults, Made for many great movies and books. Wish the reality had been fact instead of illusion. Interesting read.
What was different about this book, was that much of it focused on the roles of women, black and white. I never knew that plantation wives had it so hard, they too were slaves though in a more luxurious setting, but trapped all the same. Of course, there were some who were fortunate enough to not live on the plantation but instead live in a house in town. The black women I think I knew more about, but it was interesting to see the many different ways the white women lived, and their feeling toward this.
Loved the pictures, still love the idea of Ol' South, even with all its blemishes and faults, Made for many great movies and books. Wish the reality had been fact instead of illusion. Interesting read.
July 17, 2015
First of all, if you are planning to visit Georgia with your family, don’t ask the tourist bureau to help you find Tara! It isn’t there. Neither is Scarlett or Mammy. They’re all fictional.
Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for the ARC.
Thank you; I feel much better having cleared the air. But nobody can make it clearer than author Catherine Clinton, who bursts the myth of the antebellum belle and her loyal house-slaves better with greater heat and light than I have ever seen done by any one historian before. In a time of increasing apology and revisionism that makes the American Civil War seem to have been merely a dreadful misunderstanding, and that decreases the social and material weight of the slaves it freed, Clinton’s historical smack back to reality makes me want to stand up and cheer!
Clinton focuses primarily on Southern women, but she takes just about all of the myths of the “Lost Cause” and puts them through the shredder, introducing them and their origins, and in a manner meticulous but never, ever dull, demonstrates why each of them is incorrect. She doesn’t pussyfoot or hesitate to call bigotry by its name, but the tone is of the compelling storyteller rather than that of the lecturer. In a day when Caucasian Americans sometimes carelessly discard the complaints of people of color as “playing the race card” without first examining to see whether it has in fact been called out righteously, this succinct yet thorough narrative is refreshing, as if someone has opened the windows and let some of the cobwebs sweep away.
Clinton uses the voices of Southern women, both Caucasian and Black, and recognizes that there is a dearth of the latter, but she has turned over every possible rock and ferreted out every last resource in the back stacks of government libraries dating clear back to the WPA to access what is available. She also quotes Mary Chesnut, a Caucasian Southerner whose diary is a mainstay of Civil War historians, enough and in enough interesting ways to make me want to go dig up my own copy, which bored me to tears the first two times I tried to slog through it. Filtered through Clinton’s prose, it is a lively and interesting vantage point. And she quotes WEB DuBois, one of my greatest heroes.
There is one area where most US historians dislike to tread (or are perhaps unaware), and I read on with interest (this being the field in which I taught for many years) to see whether she would go there. She did. Not many American historians can bring themselves to discuss the deepest Southern shame (and by extension, America’s for having accommodated it so long) of slave breeding, a practice done in no other part of the world. In a time in which slavery was dying out across Europe, US border states, which had difficulty growing crops year ‘round to sustain the (minimal but still existent) expenses incurred by slaves, had turned to trafficking in human flesh, going so far as to select who should sleep with whom out in the quarters so that they would have the best possible product to sell once the progeny was born and weaned. Clinton does not use the word “breeding”, but she does describe it accurately.
She also points out that actually, most white Southern women did not lead the lives of idle privilege that the cinema would have us believe; though their lives were many times better than that of slaves, they had a large household to manage without the labor saving devices technology would bring. And of course, most white households were not those of planters. She discusses the various social crumbs that were dropped for less affluent whites by the aristocracy in order to keep them from crossing the color line in solidarity with other toilers.
I usually must abbreviate my reviews for fear I will give away all the meaty parts of a book and leave the reader no real purpose in checking it out personally. There is no danger of that here. This narrative is so deftly and expertly crafted that I found myself bookmarking more than half of its pages, because so many had a salient fact, interesting quote, or well-turned interpretation. I constantly found myself thinking, “Yes!”
When Clinton mentioned the Southern fear of “miscegenation”, or racial intermarriage, this reviewer could not help a small intake of breath, given that in other times, I would be deemed guilty and my husband would likely be dead.
If you have any interest whatsoever in the American Civil War, you need this book. If women’s history is of interest to you, get this book.
If you care about issues of race in the United States, there are two recently published books that should adorn your shelves and be next-read if you have not done so: this book is one, and Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns. In a sense, Wilkerson picks up where (chronologically) Clinton leaves off. And if you have already read Wilkerson, you still need to read Clinton.
What are you waiting for? Get out your credit card and order the book. You won’t be sorry.
Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for the ARC.
Thank you; I feel much better having cleared the air. But nobody can make it clearer than author Catherine Clinton, who bursts the myth of the antebellum belle and her loyal house-slaves better with greater heat and light than I have ever seen done by any one historian before. In a time of increasing apology and revisionism that makes the American Civil War seem to have been merely a dreadful misunderstanding, and that decreases the social and material weight of the slaves it freed, Clinton’s historical smack back to reality makes me want to stand up and cheer!
Clinton focuses primarily on Southern women, but she takes just about all of the myths of the “Lost Cause” and puts them through the shredder, introducing them and their origins, and in a manner meticulous but never, ever dull, demonstrates why each of them is incorrect. She doesn’t pussyfoot or hesitate to call bigotry by its name, but the tone is of the compelling storyteller rather than that of the lecturer. In a day when Caucasian Americans sometimes carelessly discard the complaints of people of color as “playing the race card” without first examining to see whether it has in fact been called out righteously, this succinct yet thorough narrative is refreshing, as if someone has opened the windows and let some of the cobwebs sweep away.
Clinton uses the voices of Southern women, both Caucasian and Black, and recognizes that there is a dearth of the latter, but she has turned over every possible rock and ferreted out every last resource in the back stacks of government libraries dating clear back to the WPA to access what is available. She also quotes Mary Chesnut, a Caucasian Southerner whose diary is a mainstay of Civil War historians, enough and in enough interesting ways to make me want to go dig up my own copy, which bored me to tears the first two times I tried to slog through it. Filtered through Clinton’s prose, it is a lively and interesting vantage point. And she quotes WEB DuBois, one of my greatest heroes.
There is one area where most US historians dislike to tread (or are perhaps unaware), and I read on with interest (this being the field in which I taught for many years) to see whether she would go there. She did. Not many American historians can bring themselves to discuss the deepest Southern shame (and by extension, America’s for having accommodated it so long) of slave breeding, a practice done in no other part of the world. In a time in which slavery was dying out across Europe, US border states, which had difficulty growing crops year ‘round to sustain the (minimal but still existent) expenses incurred by slaves, had turned to trafficking in human flesh, going so far as to select who should sleep with whom out in the quarters so that they would have the best possible product to sell once the progeny was born and weaned. Clinton does not use the word “breeding”, but she does describe it accurately.
She also points out that actually, most white Southern women did not lead the lives of idle privilege that the cinema would have us believe; though their lives were many times better than that of slaves, they had a large household to manage without the labor saving devices technology would bring. And of course, most white households were not those of planters. She discusses the various social crumbs that were dropped for less affluent whites by the aristocracy in order to keep them from crossing the color line in solidarity with other toilers.
I usually must abbreviate my reviews for fear I will give away all the meaty parts of a book and leave the reader no real purpose in checking it out personally. There is no danger of that here. This narrative is so deftly and expertly crafted that I found myself bookmarking more than half of its pages, because so many had a salient fact, interesting quote, or well-turned interpretation. I constantly found myself thinking, “Yes!”
When Clinton mentioned the Southern fear of “miscegenation”, or racial intermarriage, this reviewer could not help a small intake of breath, given that in other times, I would be deemed guilty and my husband would likely be dead.
If you have any interest whatsoever in the American Civil War, you need this book. If women’s history is of interest to you, get this book.
If you care about issues of race in the United States, there are two recently published books that should adorn your shelves and be next-read if you have not done so: this book is one, and Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns. In a sense, Wilkerson picks up where (chronologically) Clinton leaves off. And if you have already read Wilkerson, you still need to read Clinton.
What are you waiting for? Get out your credit card and order the book. You won’t be sorry.
December 23, 2013
The place and status of women, both Black and White, in Southern society has long been steeped in the myth and folklore of the confederacy. While the plight and status of Southern women was of course highly dependent upon which side of the color line one views it from, any study of southern femininity must take into account a variety of factors besides the most obvious of race. Certainly White women were afforded far greater reverence and protection in the eyes of southern society and its laws and customs than were Black women, which would remain true long after Appomattox. However consideration must also be given to the fact that on both sides of the color barrier, there existed additional factors which further defined the station of women.
For African-American women, particularly during the antebellum era, one may be tempted to only consider whether or not the women were slaves. Such an approach lacks depth however, for while free women of color in the South enjoyed a greater degree of autonomy than did her enslaved contemporaries, their free status was tenuous at best. Free Blacks during this era faced considerable prejudice and discrimination on both sides of the Mason-Dixon, but existing laws in the South regulated sharply the freedom of free Blacks both in the public and private spheres. Thus although they were free in the eyes of the law, their liberty was drastically limited and there remained the constant threat of violent punishment inflicted upon them for even minor offenses such as being away from one's place of residence after dark, or daring to look a White man in the eye. Additionally, all free Blacks of this era could easily find themselves kidnapped and resold back into slavery by unscrupulous characters involved in the lucrative interstate slave trade.
During slavery days, there also existed on the large plantations especially, a very definite slave hierarchy, with house servants and skilled tradesmen ranked more highly than unskilled labors. Related, but even more sinister in its motive, was the thriving southern market for young, light-skinned slave women, ostensibly to be employed by their masters as house servants, they frequently became their owner's mistress instead. Thus, for the light-skinned daughters of African-American slaves, the coming of age to womanhood had long been a perilous time. Throughout the South, there existed no legal protection for Black women, slave or free, from unwanted sexual advances, even outright rape and other physical abuse. Nor was much protection afforded African-American women by Southern morality or virtue, as was clearly evidenced by the propensity of slave children fathered by White men.
The outbreak of the Civil War, only heightened at least the threat of sexual violence against all women, and the imagery of barbarous, lusting Black men in Yankee blue manhandling Southern women remains an intrinsic part of the lore of the South's lost cause myth.
African-American women were even less likely to report such abuses than Whites, but in either case, charges would only come to bear if the victim swore out a formal complaint. The tight-lipped, gender and racially phobic society of the South looked down upon this and spoke about it only in hushed whispers of gossip generally. Even the perception of a consensual sexual connection between Black men and White women however, was likely to quickly lead to the lynching of the Negro and mutilation or burning often accompanied in the case of an alleged rape of a White woman. While such instances were officially condemned by both armies and severely punished, most generally by hanging, this did not prevent their occurrence. According to Catherine Clinton in her book Tara Revisited, the Union Army prosecuted such offenses vigorously and equally regardless of the race of either the victim or perpetrators in the nearly two dozen cases she located. In the South where no law prohibited violence against Black women, there would of course be few records of such incidents. Indeed this was the case however for many years to come in some places of the Deep South like Mississippi, where it was well into the twentieth century before it became legally a crime to sexually violate Black women!
The author contends the idea that some slaves, especially women, were apprehensive about their prospects as Union forces neared their vicinity, which is yet another misnomer enshrined as part of the Southern lost cause myth. Although it would be entirely understandable, considering freedom brought with it a host of questions and new circumstances to be met by the newly emancipated. In reality most slave women like their male counterparts became increasingly hopeful at the prospect of freedom and a great many did flee to Union lines at the first opportunity. This shattered the long held delusion of many slave owners, who had convinced themselves their people, were happy and content with their enslaved lot and who complained it was those slaves they had most favored, who were the first to abscond. Many of those slaves who remained as the fortunes of war slowly ground the economy of the South to a halt, became increasingly uncooperative and even surly, which they had never dared to display overtly anyway prior to the war.
The most ingrained image of the long propagated myth of Southern femininity is of course the stately southern belle, turned mistress of the manor and ardent daughter of the confederacy. This was most notably personified in the character of Scarlet O'Hara in the 1940 classic, Gone With The Wind. This epic piece of American fiction, which fairly accurately depicted the hardships endured by the civilian population of the South during the war; shortages of almost everything, invading armies, and the increasingly belligerent slave population as time wore on. The author relies upon the letters and diaries, mostly from the wives of the wealthy planter class, to show that for most southern gals who married into the slave holding elite, becoming the lady of the plantation was not such a blessing. Using excerpts from the aforementioned primary materials, Clinton asserts that many felt like over-worked, caged canaries themselves; in reality every bit a much a slave to the culture as any bondwoman. The author highlights most plantations with large numbers of slaves were located quite remotely and the social customs of the day prevented them from traveling without the escort of an adult White male. Further Clinton says that a great many were ill prepared for the workload which awaited them after their marriage. Certainly women in this era were expected to be in charge of a great many things, from nursing the sick, feeding and clothing everyone on the plantation, as well as a host of other tasks out of necessity, for there was no one else to do it. Her assertion seems a bit far fetched though, because in this age, the separation of labor between women's and men's work was quite universally well defined in all Western society, and these girls most certainly would have been aware of the things their own mothers had done.
Clinton does acknowledge that those women belonging to the elite planter class, were but a very small minority within southern society at the time, relating that only about twenty five hundred families out of some nine million White citizens of the South were owners of twenty of more slaves. Most Southern women were the wives, moms, aunts, and daughters of middle class or poor Whites. The middle class were the merchants, physicians, craftsmen, and independent farmers. The poor were mostly just that, they did not own land or any sort of enterprise of their own, instead they often simply squatting on a piece of vacant land, getting by on subsistence farming, hunting, and fishing. While most Southerners of these classes owned few or no slaves, they wholeheartedly supported secession. In fact early in the conflict most people in the South did support the Confederacy, although not so much on the basis of state's rights as the legend of the Southern lost cause would have one believe. But rather Southern honor, based as it was upon the bigoted idea of white supremacy and the idea that a man's duty was to his home and his kin, then his state, and finally to the United States government. Many saw the latter as a burdensome and bloated bureaucracy, which had lately come under the control of the most ridiculously crazed abolitionist fanatics, bent on the destruction of Southern society. They feared most of all the thought of complete equality of the races, utterly assured this would lead to the ultimate destruction of the White race, which if not destroyed outright upon the freeing of the slaves, would surely come about because of their amalgamation. The virtue of Southern White women simply could not be sacrificed in such a manner without a fight. As Clinton relates it was the women which the new confederate government appealed to and flaunted in the propaganda early on and continued to venerate after the peace.
In Tara Revisited, Clinton contends the “launching of legends” about the old South began not in the aftermath of Confederate defeat, but rather at the commencement of hostilities in 1861.(Clinton, 139) In reality the myths of southern femininity were born even before the Civil War. All of the stereotyped images of southern females, white and black had appeared in print well before then. One need only to look at Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, to clearly recognize the classic stereotyped images of Black women in American culture. The Mammy and Jezebel depictions appeared, as they did as well in a host of rebuttal books which appeared throughout the decade leading up to the war, like The Leopard's Spots and Aunt Phillis’s Cabin, or Southern Life As It Is. The latter, written by Mary Eastman in 1852, is probably the best known volume written specifically to rebut Stowe's harsh criticisms of antebellum society. The former also played a large part in the perpetration of the southern myth, being part of a trilogy written by Thomas Dixon in 1902, that were combined by D.W. Griffith in his 1915 movie Birth of the Nation. This early silent film was the dramatized the purported anarchy of Black Republican rule of the Reconstruction Era and helped to cement negative stereotypes about Blacks as a part of Americana. Hollywood and the movies and later television would of course play a huge part in reinforcing and driving home the stereotyped images of the old South and its women. Madison Avenue has also played a large part in keeping negative black stereotypes alive, with advertisers cashing in to sell hundreds of products.
One need only look to the evolution of TV families though to note the obvious prejudice against Blacks. Not until the early 1970's did George and Louise Jefferson grace prime time, shocking conservative audiences by the frequent appearance of Louise's sister and her very wealthy, and most controversially, very white husband. It would be another decade before Bill Cosby and Phylicia Rashād portraying Cliff and Clair Huxtable which first presented a truly positive image of Black families in America. Cosby, who played the part of a successful obstetrician, had long been acceptable and even adored by White audiences, but it Rashād playing a very competent and respected corporate lawyer that completely and finally broke free of the old stereotypes.
Oprah Winfrey began her meteoric rise in the mid-80's and has today become among the most successful and wealthy women in America and internationally known for her influence and charitable generosity. The Cosby Show ended its eight year, prime time run three years before the release of Clinton's book, but in the almost twenty years since then, this program has remained very popular in syndication. Today one often sees Black women portrayed in commercials as middle class soccer moms, and a host of talented African-American female singers and actresses have further eroded old models of Black femininity on the screen. Thus today it seems for the most part those old negative stereotypes are seen for what they are; ugly relics of an earlier, less enlightened age and powerful reminders of how far we have come as a society.
For African-American women, particularly during the antebellum era, one may be tempted to only consider whether or not the women were slaves. Such an approach lacks depth however, for while free women of color in the South enjoyed a greater degree of autonomy than did her enslaved contemporaries, their free status was tenuous at best. Free Blacks during this era faced considerable prejudice and discrimination on both sides of the Mason-Dixon, but existing laws in the South regulated sharply the freedom of free Blacks both in the public and private spheres. Thus although they were free in the eyes of the law, their liberty was drastically limited and there remained the constant threat of violent punishment inflicted upon them for even minor offenses such as being away from one's place of residence after dark, or daring to look a White man in the eye. Additionally, all free Blacks of this era could easily find themselves kidnapped and resold back into slavery by unscrupulous characters involved in the lucrative interstate slave trade.
During slavery days, there also existed on the large plantations especially, a very definite slave hierarchy, with house servants and skilled tradesmen ranked more highly than unskilled labors. Related, but even more sinister in its motive, was the thriving southern market for young, light-skinned slave women, ostensibly to be employed by their masters as house servants, they frequently became their owner's mistress instead. Thus, for the light-skinned daughters of African-American slaves, the coming of age to womanhood had long been a perilous time. Throughout the South, there existed no legal protection for Black women, slave or free, from unwanted sexual advances, even outright rape and other physical abuse. Nor was much protection afforded African-American women by Southern morality or virtue, as was clearly evidenced by the propensity of slave children fathered by White men.
The outbreak of the Civil War, only heightened at least the threat of sexual violence against all women, and the imagery of barbarous, lusting Black men in Yankee blue manhandling Southern women remains an intrinsic part of the lore of the South's lost cause myth.
African-American women were even less likely to report such abuses than Whites, but in either case, charges would only come to bear if the victim swore out a formal complaint. The tight-lipped, gender and racially phobic society of the South looked down upon this and spoke about it only in hushed whispers of gossip generally. Even the perception of a consensual sexual connection between Black men and White women however, was likely to quickly lead to the lynching of the Negro and mutilation or burning often accompanied in the case of an alleged rape of a White woman. While such instances were officially condemned by both armies and severely punished, most generally by hanging, this did not prevent their occurrence. According to Catherine Clinton in her book Tara Revisited, the Union Army prosecuted such offenses vigorously and equally regardless of the race of either the victim or perpetrators in the nearly two dozen cases she located. In the South where no law prohibited violence against Black women, there would of course be few records of such incidents. Indeed this was the case however for many years to come in some places of the Deep South like Mississippi, where it was well into the twentieth century before it became legally a crime to sexually violate Black women!
The author contends the idea that some slaves, especially women, were apprehensive about their prospects as Union forces neared their vicinity, which is yet another misnomer enshrined as part of the Southern lost cause myth. Although it would be entirely understandable, considering freedom brought with it a host of questions and new circumstances to be met by the newly emancipated. In reality most slave women like their male counterparts became increasingly hopeful at the prospect of freedom and a great many did flee to Union lines at the first opportunity. This shattered the long held delusion of many slave owners, who had convinced themselves their people, were happy and content with their enslaved lot and who complained it was those slaves they had most favored, who were the first to abscond. Many of those slaves who remained as the fortunes of war slowly ground the economy of the South to a halt, became increasingly uncooperative and even surly, which they had never dared to display overtly anyway prior to the war.
The most ingrained image of the long propagated myth of Southern femininity is of course the stately southern belle, turned mistress of the manor and ardent daughter of the confederacy. This was most notably personified in the character of Scarlet O'Hara in the 1940 classic, Gone With The Wind. This epic piece of American fiction, which fairly accurately depicted the hardships endured by the civilian population of the South during the war; shortages of almost everything, invading armies, and the increasingly belligerent slave population as time wore on. The author relies upon the letters and diaries, mostly from the wives of the wealthy planter class, to show that for most southern gals who married into the slave holding elite, becoming the lady of the plantation was not such a blessing. Using excerpts from the aforementioned primary materials, Clinton asserts that many felt like over-worked, caged canaries themselves; in reality every bit a much a slave to the culture as any bondwoman. The author highlights most plantations with large numbers of slaves were located quite remotely and the social customs of the day prevented them from traveling without the escort of an adult White male. Further Clinton says that a great many were ill prepared for the workload which awaited them after their marriage. Certainly women in this era were expected to be in charge of a great many things, from nursing the sick, feeding and clothing everyone on the plantation, as well as a host of other tasks out of necessity, for there was no one else to do it. Her assertion seems a bit far fetched though, because in this age, the separation of labor between women's and men's work was quite universally well defined in all Western society, and these girls most certainly would have been aware of the things their own mothers had done.
Clinton does acknowledge that those women belonging to the elite planter class, were but a very small minority within southern society at the time, relating that only about twenty five hundred families out of some nine million White citizens of the South were owners of twenty of more slaves. Most Southern women were the wives, moms, aunts, and daughters of middle class or poor Whites. The middle class were the merchants, physicians, craftsmen, and independent farmers. The poor were mostly just that, they did not own land or any sort of enterprise of their own, instead they often simply squatting on a piece of vacant land, getting by on subsistence farming, hunting, and fishing. While most Southerners of these classes owned few or no slaves, they wholeheartedly supported secession. In fact early in the conflict most people in the South did support the Confederacy, although not so much on the basis of state's rights as the legend of the Southern lost cause would have one believe. But rather Southern honor, based as it was upon the bigoted idea of white supremacy and the idea that a man's duty was to his home and his kin, then his state, and finally to the United States government. Many saw the latter as a burdensome and bloated bureaucracy, which had lately come under the control of the most ridiculously crazed abolitionist fanatics, bent on the destruction of Southern society. They feared most of all the thought of complete equality of the races, utterly assured this would lead to the ultimate destruction of the White race, which if not destroyed outright upon the freeing of the slaves, would surely come about because of their amalgamation. The virtue of Southern White women simply could not be sacrificed in such a manner without a fight. As Clinton relates it was the women which the new confederate government appealed to and flaunted in the propaganda early on and continued to venerate after the peace.
In Tara Revisited, Clinton contends the “launching of legends” about the old South began not in the aftermath of Confederate defeat, but rather at the commencement of hostilities in 1861.(Clinton, 139) In reality the myths of southern femininity were born even before the Civil War. All of the stereotyped images of southern females, white and black had appeared in print well before then. One need only to look at Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, to clearly recognize the classic stereotyped images of Black women in American culture. The Mammy and Jezebel depictions appeared, as they did as well in a host of rebuttal books which appeared throughout the decade leading up to the war, like The Leopard's Spots and Aunt Phillis’s Cabin, or Southern Life As It Is. The latter, written by Mary Eastman in 1852, is probably the best known volume written specifically to rebut Stowe's harsh criticisms of antebellum society. The former also played a large part in the perpetration of the southern myth, being part of a trilogy written by Thomas Dixon in 1902, that were combined by D.W. Griffith in his 1915 movie Birth of the Nation. This early silent film was the dramatized the purported anarchy of Black Republican rule of the Reconstruction Era and helped to cement negative stereotypes about Blacks as a part of Americana. Hollywood and the movies and later television would of course play a huge part in reinforcing and driving home the stereotyped images of the old South and its women. Madison Avenue has also played a large part in keeping negative black stereotypes alive, with advertisers cashing in to sell hundreds of products.
One need only look to the evolution of TV families though to note the obvious prejudice against Blacks. Not until the early 1970's did George and Louise Jefferson grace prime time, shocking conservative audiences by the frequent appearance of Louise's sister and her very wealthy, and most controversially, very white husband. It would be another decade before Bill Cosby and Phylicia Rashād portraying Cliff and Clair Huxtable which first presented a truly positive image of Black families in America. Cosby, who played the part of a successful obstetrician, had long been acceptable and even adored by White audiences, but it Rashād playing a very competent and respected corporate lawyer that completely and finally broke free of the old stereotypes.
Oprah Winfrey began her meteoric rise in the mid-80's and has today become among the most successful and wealthy women in America and internationally known for her influence and charitable generosity. The Cosby Show ended its eight year, prime time run three years before the release of Clinton's book, but in the almost twenty years since then, this program has remained very popular in syndication. Today one often sees Black women portrayed in commercials as middle class soccer moms, and a host of talented African-American female singers and actresses have further eroded old models of Black femininity on the screen. Thus today it seems for the most part those old negative stereotypes are seen for what they are; ugly relics of an earlier, less enlightened age and powerful reminders of how far we have come as a society.
August 10, 2020
The book jacket describes that this book is going to be about cutting through "the romantic myth" that enabled the film Gone with the Wind to glamorize Scarlett O'Hara and the Plantation South while making the Black characters into lazy, offensive stereotypes. The debate around Hattie McDaniel continues. McDaniel played the role of "Mammy" to Scarlett. She became the first African-American to win an Academy Award, winning in the Best Supporting Actress category, but famously experienced racist resistance to her attendance at the Oscars ceremony in Los Angeles. She sat at a segregated table to the side of the room. The Ambassador Hotel where the ceremony was held "was for whites only," but allowed McDaniel in as a "favour."
Prior to reading this book, I went in with a reasonable amount of respect for Catherine Clinton's scholarship as a Professor of History, and I still have that to a degree. My expectation was that this book would in fact draw from the "...wealth of poignant letters, slave narratives, and other accounts" to present the lives of both Black and white women in the antebellum South, and not to advocate for what amounts to an argument that white women also faced difficulties during the antebellum era.
I'm in agreement when Clinton asserts: "The lives of black Southern women...remain obscured and uncelebrated. Too little evidence remains on slave and freedwomen...the pages of history remain overcrowded with material drawn too heavily from white interpretations of black experience and from Confederate perspectives on events." However, rather than deconstructing this or trying to solve that problem, she veers off the rails in her devotion to the idea that plantation mistresses had it "just as bad" as the slaves. I'm sorry, did I just read that right? Also, what?
She privileges the experiences of Confederate white women who held views we now consider atrocious. She devotes some pieces here and there to calling slavery a paternalistic system and pointing out we should highly question the claims of white Southern planters who "quoted" from their slaves, asking them if they would join the Yankees (the Union forces) only to transcribe the slave's reply in a stereotypical, offensive manner designed to make them look as uneducated and simple as possible. I understand that from an archival and historical standpoint, it is vital she doesn't alter the source material of where she found these quotes, and she's right to question whose lens and whose privilege they are constructed from, but I maintain that this was one of the problematic aspects of the book for me.
While Clinton explains the changes white women went through at the dawn of the Civil War when most of the men went off into battle, she unintentionally makes it seem as though she wants the reader to care more about their experiences than what slave families and women were suffering through.
Yes, it is important to know about the views Southern white women loyal to the Confederacy held during slavery. It is important to know about the associations they set up to assist with medical aid. It is important to know about women who acted as spies during the war, and who went to great lengths to serve as soldiers. But it is also vital not to mute their role in the reinforcement of male slaveholders, as it is to acknowledge that plantation mistresses could be just as--if not more cruel--than their male counterparts. She may not have done this intentionally, but Clinton also diminishes and does not give enough exploration to the role of Black women during the war, except for a few paragraphs and a photo of Harriet Tubman for the most part.
She states: "Reports of blacks and whites banding together against Yankee incursion cannot be translated into any genuine breakdown of racial segregation" and that "...blacks remains without any real standing within the Confederacy, a nation premised on white supremacy." Absolutely. However, she mingles this with stories of white women who gave birth in the middle of the war and remained in perilous condition while their husbands were away, expressing surprise that the slaves they had formerly owned in human bondage had abandoned them. (shaking my head)
Yes, the author does devote a chunk of the book to the hugely problematic white supremacist organized, Daughters of the Confederacy, and warns that it isn't something that has faded away with time. And yes, one of the book's final chapters tries to explain why Southern writers romanticized their "heyday" of the antebellum era. It features many rare and important photographs and illustrated material that are useful to anyone researching the period, particularly women's roles. The final chapter also includes a very useful section about how Hollywood has treated this subject matter. However, in sum, I think this book should be regarded with a more skeptical lens and I have changed my original rating accordingly.
Prior to reading this book, I went in with a reasonable amount of respect for Catherine Clinton's scholarship as a Professor of History, and I still have that to a degree. My expectation was that this book would in fact draw from the "...wealth of poignant letters, slave narratives, and other accounts" to present the lives of both Black and white women in the antebellum South, and not to advocate for what amounts to an argument that white women also faced difficulties during the antebellum era.
I'm in agreement when Clinton asserts: "The lives of black Southern women...remain obscured and uncelebrated. Too little evidence remains on slave and freedwomen...the pages of history remain overcrowded with material drawn too heavily from white interpretations of black experience and from Confederate perspectives on events." However, rather than deconstructing this or trying to solve that problem, she veers off the rails in her devotion to the idea that plantation mistresses had it "just as bad" as the slaves. I'm sorry, did I just read that right? Also, what?
She privileges the experiences of Confederate white women who held views we now consider atrocious. She devotes some pieces here and there to calling slavery a paternalistic system and pointing out we should highly question the claims of white Southern planters who "quoted" from their slaves, asking them if they would join the Yankees (the Union forces) only to transcribe the slave's reply in a stereotypical, offensive manner designed to make them look as uneducated and simple as possible. I understand that from an archival and historical standpoint, it is vital she doesn't alter the source material of where she found these quotes, and she's right to question whose lens and whose privilege they are constructed from, but I maintain that this was one of the problematic aspects of the book for me.
While Clinton explains the changes white women went through at the dawn of the Civil War when most of the men went off into battle, she unintentionally makes it seem as though she wants the reader to care more about their experiences than what slave families and women were suffering through.
Yes, it is important to know about the views Southern white women loyal to the Confederacy held during slavery. It is important to know about the associations they set up to assist with medical aid. It is important to know about women who acted as spies during the war, and who went to great lengths to serve as soldiers. But it is also vital not to mute their role in the reinforcement of male slaveholders, as it is to acknowledge that plantation mistresses could be just as--if not more cruel--than their male counterparts. She may not have done this intentionally, but Clinton also diminishes and does not give enough exploration to the role of Black women during the war, except for a few paragraphs and a photo of Harriet Tubman for the most part.
She states: "Reports of blacks and whites banding together against Yankee incursion cannot be translated into any genuine breakdown of racial segregation" and that "...blacks remains without any real standing within the Confederacy, a nation premised on white supremacy." Absolutely. However, she mingles this with stories of white women who gave birth in the middle of the war and remained in perilous condition while their husbands were away, expressing surprise that the slaves they had formerly owned in human bondage had abandoned them. (shaking my head)
Yes, the author does devote a chunk of the book to the hugely problematic white supremacist organized, Daughters of the Confederacy, and warns that it isn't something that has faded away with time. And yes, one of the book's final chapters tries to explain why Southern writers romanticized their "heyday" of the antebellum era. It features many rare and important photographs and illustrated material that are useful to anyone researching the period, particularly women's roles. The final chapter also includes a very useful section about how Hollywood has treated this subject matter. However, in sum, I think this book should be regarded with a more skeptical lens and I have changed my original rating accordingly.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 11, 2014
Tara Revisited is Ms. Clinton's attempt to dismantle and interpret the Plantation myths of the South which developed after the Civil War over the years of the Reconstruction but reached their heights after the release of the movie version of Gone with the Wind. While she attempts to present a balanced history of women in the Antebellum South, like many others Ms. Clinton focuses more and more on white upper class women over both poor women and slaves. This is mainly due to the disparity of sources for the latter women and their roles in society as the upper class women were the ones with the leisure time and education with which to write about their lives. For all its faults, this is a very good history of women in the Antebellum South and does a very good job at defusing the myths though thanks to popular culture those myths will never truly die off as periodic revivals of historical films set in this period revive it.
The largest complaint I had with this book was the focus on how unprepared the women who became plantation mistresses on their marriage were supposed to be and how they all felt caged by their marriages. This viewpoint is a reflection of the primary sources Ms. Clinton primarily personal letters and diaries which supported her thesis. Considering that most young women in this era were raised at home by their mothers on other plantations and likely saw what their mothers were doing every day, were likely trained and taught household management by their mothers and other female relatives, and spent time among the household slaves on a daily basis, I cannot see this idea of Southern White Elite Women as so helpless and hopeless. Perhaps this was true of the few women who were sent to Northern finishing schools prior to their marriages but not every woman and surely some of those who didn't complain kept diaries and sent letters. There is little to no information other than generalities with regard to the middle and lower class women. And, like many other authors of Antebellum Southern History, she repeats the oft asserted refrain that every white male plantation owner kept one or more mistresses among his slaves, condoned the sexual abuse of his slaves by his male relatives, and uses the well edited recorded Slave Narratives to support this viewpoint. It's now well-known that by the time those narratives were recorded, the tellers of the stories were catering their stories to their listeners preset expectations meaning that many of those narratives are as biased as the authors who use them as supports.
Still, as a history of Antebellum Southern Women, this is an excellent resource with an extensive list of primary sources with which to go back and actually locate the information and see for yourself exactly how the women of the Antebellum South actually saw themselves. For that alone, I recommend this book with reservations regarding the slight authorial bias but every book writing about the Old South and its pre-Confederacy society has a bias of one kind or another, there is no escaping that problem.
Book received from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
The largest complaint I had with this book was the focus on how unprepared the women who became plantation mistresses on their marriage were supposed to be and how they all felt caged by their marriages. This viewpoint is a reflection of the primary sources Ms. Clinton primarily personal letters and diaries which supported her thesis. Considering that most young women in this era were raised at home by their mothers on other plantations and likely saw what their mothers were doing every day, were likely trained and taught household management by their mothers and other female relatives, and spent time among the household slaves on a daily basis, I cannot see this idea of Southern White Elite Women as so helpless and hopeless. Perhaps this was true of the few women who were sent to Northern finishing schools prior to their marriages but not every woman and surely some of those who didn't complain kept diaries and sent letters. There is little to no information other than generalities with regard to the middle and lower class women. And, like many other authors of Antebellum Southern History, she repeats the oft asserted refrain that every white male plantation owner kept one or more mistresses among his slaves, condoned the sexual abuse of his slaves by his male relatives, and uses the well edited recorded Slave Narratives to support this viewpoint. It's now well-known that by the time those narratives were recorded, the tellers of the stories were catering their stories to their listeners preset expectations meaning that many of those narratives are as biased as the authors who use them as supports.
Still, as a history of Antebellum Southern Women, this is an excellent resource with an extensive list of primary sources with which to go back and actually locate the information and see for yourself exactly how the women of the Antebellum South actually saw themselves. For that alone, I recommend this book with reservations regarding the slight authorial bias but every book writing about the Old South and its pre-Confederacy society has a bias of one kind or another, there is no escaping that problem.
Book received from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
January 8, 2016
Accolades go to Ms. Catherine Clinton for her incredible history of Southern women of all colors, their men, and the serious toll the Civil War absolutely took on each and every one. Northerners, back in time, may only have heard about the federal troops and how hard it was to keep them supplied with uniforms, boots, and blankets. This is a rare account of most if not all of the sacrifices not only made on the battlefield, but to the families left to fend for themselves back home in the South. They lost nearly everything. Starvation was a part of daily life after a while. Families had to flee to safety, leaving all the possessions they could not pack in wagons and head off to who knows where.
As a historian, I have learned about this traumatic lifestyle in college. My professor went into great depth to inform us how cruel and degrading federal troops "had to be" to win the country back as a whole. However, from a northern Great Plains perspective, we really did not "pick a side". Everyone who lived through the "war of Northern Aggression", as the South views it, was affected. But none as much as Southern women and children, both white and black. I love that Ms. Clinton is able to write from a completely unbiased perspective. This is one extremely important piece of history that needed to be told. I am so glad that it is told effectively by Ms. Clinton. My review cannot do her book the justice it deserves.
Thank you to Ms. Clinton, Abbeville Press and Netgalley for giving me a free copy of this book to read and give my honest review.
As a historian, I have learned about this traumatic lifestyle in college. My professor went into great depth to inform us how cruel and degrading federal troops "had to be" to win the country back as a whole. However, from a northern Great Plains perspective, we really did not "pick a side". Everyone who lived through the "war of Northern Aggression", as the South views it, was affected. But none as much as Southern women and children, both white and black. I love that Ms. Clinton is able to write from a completely unbiased perspective. This is one extremely important piece of history that needed to be told. I am so glad that it is told effectively by Ms. Clinton. My review cannot do her book the justice it deserves.
Thank you to Ms. Clinton, Abbeville Press and Netgalley for giving me a free copy of this book to read and give my honest review.
April 28, 2016
GABN I received a free electronic copy of this true look at Southern women from Netgalley and Catherine Clinton. Thank you, for sharing you work with me. I look forward to an entertaining and educational read.
And this was an insightful journey into the lives of many southern women, black and white, from pre-to-post Civil War. This is a book I will buy for friends, and keep to read again when I need to put my world into perspective. Catherine Clinton has obviously spent much time researching the effect of the war on the women and children of southern families, and generously shared this knowledge with us. I would recommend to anyone with an interest in the Civil War, southern women or southern literature. This one is a keeper.
And this was an insightful journey into the lives of many southern women, black and white, from pre-to-post Civil War. This is a book I will buy for friends, and keep to read again when I need to put my world into perspective. Catherine Clinton has obviously spent much time researching the effect of the war on the women and children of southern families, and generously shared this knowledge with us. I would recommend to anyone with an interest in the Civil War, southern women or southern literature. This one is a keeper.
December 11, 2016
Review of: Tara Revisited: Women, War & The Plantation Legend, by Catherine Clinton
by Stan Prager (8-4-16)
There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton fields called the Old South … here in this pretty world Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave . . . Look for it only in books for it is no more than a dream remembered . . . A Civilization gone with the wind . . .
The preceding is the title card screen prologue to a 1939 epic film that was so tightly woven into the fabric of popular culture that no American of my generation, or the two generations that preceded it, could be unfamiliar with it. Its musical score was as imprinted upon our DNA as were any number of snippets of dialog, such as the frightened slave Prissy screeching "De Yankees is comin!," the antihero Rhett Butler uttering the scornful retort, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” and the manipulative vixen Scarlett herself, in the final scene, voicing an irrepressible optimism with “Tara! Home. I'll go home . . . After all ... tomorrow is another day.” Tara. That was the storybook plantation home of Scarlett O’Hara, the locus for the romantic legend in the novel by Margaret Mitchell and its movie adaptation, that title card writ large in an imaginary dimension where gallant giants walked the earth and dutiful slaves like Mammy and Prissy lived in terror of invading Yankees instead of in gleeful anticipation of fleeing to freedom in their lines. And much more than a classic movie, Gone with the Wind served as the most successful paean to the myth of the “Lost Cause” since Birth of a Nation, with less malevolence and a much larger and more enduring audience.
In her highly original, thought-provocative study, Tara Revisited: Women, War & The Plantation Legend, Catherine Clinton walks back from the Tara of that iconic spectacle to its historical roots in an antebellum era erased by war that then spawned a revisionism that has not only stubbornly persisted but has seen a disturbing late renaissance as a similarly fanciful emergent heritage claimed by present-day right-wingers wrapped in Confederate flags. The current generation of the latter not only promote the justice of rebellion, but even imagine tens of thousands of African-Americans garbed in gray and willingly wielding carbines to defend the Confederacy!
The scholarly consensus is that a narrow slice of elite planters committed to an expansion of slavery brought on the secession crisis and subsequent Civil War that resulted in the deaths of more than six hundred thousand Americans. The north at first put men at arms only to preserve the union, although emancipation later became a war aim. The south lost the war but in some sense won the peace. As Reconstruction gave way to “Redemption,” former Confederates regained control of the south and the freed African-Americans – who had enjoyed a brief period of near equal protection under the law – were terrorized, murdered and reduced to a second class status that persisted into the 1960s and beyond. The defeated promulgated a myth of the “Lost Cause” that rewrote history to claim that the conflict was about states’ rights rather than slavery, focused upon the depredations of Northern carpetbaggers, and especially upon the imagined threats of black men preying upon helpless white women. The “Lost Cause” was the creation mythology of this post-war south, and its vast success can be measured by the fact that its tissue of lies managed to convert much of the north in the decades to come, as reconciliation turned into a universal goal and the institutionalized abuse of African-Americans was rarely even acknowledged.
In Tara Revisited, Clinton focuses upon the plantation legend that is integral to central elements of the “Lost Cause” myth and turns it on its head. While she acknowledges there were indeed women like Scarlett O’Hara from families of extreme wealth who lived on large plantations with many slaves and busied themselves with social dalliances, her cohort comprised the tiniest minority of antebellum southern women. In fact, plantation life typically meant hard work and much responsibility even for affluent women. More critically, three-quarters of southerners owned no slaves at all and nearly ninety per cent of the remainder owned twenty or fewer. Plantations like Tara probably accounted for less than ten percent of the total, which is why its persistence in Lost Cause plantation legend is so notable. As such, Clinton takes us on a tour of the real antebellum south and the real white women who inhabited it: typically wives and daughters with no slaves who had very modest means, deprived of husbands and fathers away at war while they struggled to survive. Some worked in manufacturing to support the war effort, some volunteered to care for the wounded, some served as spies – for both sides – but most focused simply on keeping themselves and their families alive in a time of little food and great deprivation. She also reveals those who are often invisible to history, enslaved African-American women who lived hand-to-mouth in lean and dangerous times, most of whom were unable to escape to Union lines yet eagerly anticipated a northern victory that would ensure their liberation. Masters tried to instill fear in their slaves about the coming blue marauders, but most blacks saw right through this; if there was a cry of "De Yankees is comin!” it was more likely to be in celebration than distress.
Clinton also traces the growth of the legend of “rose colored plantation life” from its roots in a kind of forbidden literary tradition dubbed “Confederate porn” (p203-04) that glorified whites while demeaning blacks, to its central public role within Lost Cause theology from Birth of a Nation to Gone with the Wind and beyond. The living breathing cheerleaders of this fantasy are the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), an organization founded in 1894 to celebrate Confederate culture that continues to thrive today. It is no coincidence that there was both a rebirth of the Lost Cause and a resurgence of Confederate heritage during the Dixiecrat resistance to the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. The controversial Stars & Bars that was recently removed from the South Carolina statehouse was only first raised in 1962 by the then governor to protest desegregation. Since 1965, the UDC has coordinated an annual “Massing of the Flag” ceremony in Richmond on Jefferson Davis’s birthday in which the participants pledge “I salute the Confederate flag, with affection, reverence and undying remembrance.” [p186] There is of course for us in 2016 something both disturbing and surreal about this event, which seems to lionize the forces of rebellion while dishonoring the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of soldiers in blue who died to preserve the United States, not to mention the millions of African-Americans who were first enslaved beneath this flag and then terrorized and degraded by it for a century afterward.
Catherine Clinton, who is currently the Denman Professor of American History at the University of Texas at San Antonio, has a long resume as a historian that goes back to the PhD from Princeton that she earned with the completion of her dissertation under the direction of eminent Civil War scholar James M. McPherson. She wrote Tara Revisited in 1995, and I cannot help but wonder if she is at all surprised by yet another generational resurgence of the “Lost Cause” as an element of contemporary right-wing politics.
I recently screened Gone with the Wind on DVD. In retrospect, it is not really a very good film and it does not stand up well over time; the acting is often histrionic, the dialogue overwrought. It is dwarfed by other notable films of the same era. Unlike those of my generation, most millennials have probably never seen it. Yet, there remains a stubborn resilience in the notion of Tara, as underscored by the ongoing popularity of pilgrimage weeks in the south, “in which plantations recreate the Old South with costumes and other trappings,” and, as the author articulately observes, “in many ways embalm a departed south that perhaps never lived outside Confederate imaginations.” [p187] As such, the central theme of this well-written and eclectic work retains its relevance today. I highly recommend it.
My Review of: Tara Revisited: Women, War & The Plantation Legend, by Catherine Clinton, is live on my book blog:
https://regarp.com/2016/08/04/review-...
by Stan Prager (8-4-16)
There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton fields called the Old South … here in this pretty world Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave . . . Look for it only in books for it is no more than a dream remembered . . . A Civilization gone with the wind . . .
The preceding is the title card screen prologue to a 1939 epic film that was so tightly woven into the fabric of popular culture that no American of my generation, or the two generations that preceded it, could be unfamiliar with it. Its musical score was as imprinted upon our DNA as were any number of snippets of dialog, such as the frightened slave Prissy screeching "De Yankees is comin!," the antihero Rhett Butler uttering the scornful retort, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” and the manipulative vixen Scarlett herself, in the final scene, voicing an irrepressible optimism with “Tara! Home. I'll go home . . . After all ... tomorrow is another day.” Tara. That was the storybook plantation home of Scarlett O’Hara, the locus for the romantic legend in the novel by Margaret Mitchell and its movie adaptation, that title card writ large in an imaginary dimension where gallant giants walked the earth and dutiful slaves like Mammy and Prissy lived in terror of invading Yankees instead of in gleeful anticipation of fleeing to freedom in their lines. And much more than a classic movie, Gone with the Wind served as the most successful paean to the myth of the “Lost Cause” since Birth of a Nation, with less malevolence and a much larger and more enduring audience.
In her highly original, thought-provocative study, Tara Revisited: Women, War & The Plantation Legend, Catherine Clinton walks back from the Tara of that iconic spectacle to its historical roots in an antebellum era erased by war that then spawned a revisionism that has not only stubbornly persisted but has seen a disturbing late renaissance as a similarly fanciful emergent heritage claimed by present-day right-wingers wrapped in Confederate flags. The current generation of the latter not only promote the justice of rebellion, but even imagine tens of thousands of African-Americans garbed in gray and willingly wielding carbines to defend the Confederacy!
The scholarly consensus is that a narrow slice of elite planters committed to an expansion of slavery brought on the secession crisis and subsequent Civil War that resulted in the deaths of more than six hundred thousand Americans. The north at first put men at arms only to preserve the union, although emancipation later became a war aim. The south lost the war but in some sense won the peace. As Reconstruction gave way to “Redemption,” former Confederates regained control of the south and the freed African-Americans – who had enjoyed a brief period of near equal protection under the law – were terrorized, murdered and reduced to a second class status that persisted into the 1960s and beyond. The defeated promulgated a myth of the “Lost Cause” that rewrote history to claim that the conflict was about states’ rights rather than slavery, focused upon the depredations of Northern carpetbaggers, and especially upon the imagined threats of black men preying upon helpless white women. The “Lost Cause” was the creation mythology of this post-war south, and its vast success can be measured by the fact that its tissue of lies managed to convert much of the north in the decades to come, as reconciliation turned into a universal goal and the institutionalized abuse of African-Americans was rarely even acknowledged.
In Tara Revisited, Clinton focuses upon the plantation legend that is integral to central elements of the “Lost Cause” myth and turns it on its head. While she acknowledges there were indeed women like Scarlett O’Hara from families of extreme wealth who lived on large plantations with many slaves and busied themselves with social dalliances, her cohort comprised the tiniest minority of antebellum southern women. In fact, plantation life typically meant hard work and much responsibility even for affluent women. More critically, three-quarters of southerners owned no slaves at all and nearly ninety per cent of the remainder owned twenty or fewer. Plantations like Tara probably accounted for less than ten percent of the total, which is why its persistence in Lost Cause plantation legend is so notable. As such, Clinton takes us on a tour of the real antebellum south and the real white women who inhabited it: typically wives and daughters with no slaves who had very modest means, deprived of husbands and fathers away at war while they struggled to survive. Some worked in manufacturing to support the war effort, some volunteered to care for the wounded, some served as spies – for both sides – but most focused simply on keeping themselves and their families alive in a time of little food and great deprivation. She also reveals those who are often invisible to history, enslaved African-American women who lived hand-to-mouth in lean and dangerous times, most of whom were unable to escape to Union lines yet eagerly anticipated a northern victory that would ensure their liberation. Masters tried to instill fear in their slaves about the coming blue marauders, but most blacks saw right through this; if there was a cry of "De Yankees is comin!” it was more likely to be in celebration than distress.
Clinton also traces the growth of the legend of “rose colored plantation life” from its roots in a kind of forbidden literary tradition dubbed “Confederate porn” (p203-04) that glorified whites while demeaning blacks, to its central public role within Lost Cause theology from Birth of a Nation to Gone with the Wind and beyond. The living breathing cheerleaders of this fantasy are the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), an organization founded in 1894 to celebrate Confederate culture that continues to thrive today. It is no coincidence that there was both a rebirth of the Lost Cause and a resurgence of Confederate heritage during the Dixiecrat resistance to the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. The controversial Stars & Bars that was recently removed from the South Carolina statehouse was only first raised in 1962 by the then governor to protest desegregation. Since 1965, the UDC has coordinated an annual “Massing of the Flag” ceremony in Richmond on Jefferson Davis’s birthday in which the participants pledge “I salute the Confederate flag, with affection, reverence and undying remembrance.” [p186] There is of course for us in 2016 something both disturbing and surreal about this event, which seems to lionize the forces of rebellion while dishonoring the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of soldiers in blue who died to preserve the United States, not to mention the millions of African-Americans who were first enslaved beneath this flag and then terrorized and degraded by it for a century afterward.
Catherine Clinton, who is currently the Denman Professor of American History at the University of Texas at San Antonio, has a long resume as a historian that goes back to the PhD from Princeton that she earned with the completion of her dissertation under the direction of eminent Civil War scholar James M. McPherson. She wrote Tara Revisited in 1995, and I cannot help but wonder if she is at all surprised by yet another generational resurgence of the “Lost Cause” as an element of contemporary right-wing politics.
I recently screened Gone with the Wind on DVD. In retrospect, it is not really a very good film and it does not stand up well over time; the acting is often histrionic, the dialogue overwrought. It is dwarfed by other notable films of the same era. Unlike those of my generation, most millennials have probably never seen it. Yet, there remains a stubborn resilience in the notion of Tara, as underscored by the ongoing popularity of pilgrimage weeks in the south, “in which plantations recreate the Old South with costumes and other trappings,” and, as the author articulately observes, “in many ways embalm a departed south that perhaps never lived outside Confederate imaginations.” [p187] As such, the central theme of this well-written and eclectic work retains its relevance today. I highly recommend it.
My Review of: Tara Revisited: Women, War & The Plantation Legend, by Catherine Clinton, is live on my book blog:
https://regarp.com/2016/08/04/review-...
September 13, 2023
This slim little book spoke absolute VOLUMES. As a huge GWTW fan & an actual history buff, I am well aware of the stereotypes perpetuated in GWTW. When I saw this book, the history buff side of me took over & I knew I had to read it. Honestly, I think everyone should, whether you're into women's studies, African American studies, Civil Rights studies, Psychology, Civil War studies, or anything else! This book explores the realities of the antebellum period through to the perpetuation of Lost Cause & racist attitudes of today. A lot of the explorations come from the pages of writings and the interviews with those who didn't know how to write about the women who actually lived it. It crosses all sorts of lines from class, race, color, gender & age. It's an important book that hasn't seen the widespread popularity & notice that it should have. I really hope that my review helps rectify that!
March 5, 2021
For such a heavy subject, the writing was light and engaging which made this a surprisingly quick read. With plenty of historical letters and diary entries, this was enjoyable. The book focused primarily on upper-class white women, disproportionately so when working/lower class white women and slaves made up a much larger percentage of the population. While some of their stories are covered, I would have enjoyed learning more about their lives. And while the author successfully defends her assertion that plantation life is largely mythologized today, I take issue with presenting white plantation wives as having as heavy a burden to bear as slaves. However, the book was otherwise informative, well-written, and had plenty of photographs to enjoy.
April 2, 2021
First selection for my new book discussion club. Sewickley Library book discussions aka BBBC. The library was very generous in providing a venue and support from the staff. The inception was me asking the librarian if there was a group that met at lunch time. She was the one that helped me with books for my YMCA book club. Well, she said there is not one but you could start one. And I did. Sadly, that librarian who was so helpful and such an inspiration died of cancer a few years later. She lives on in my heart.
May 21, 2024
Good scholarly outline of the experiences of plantation mistresses and their slaves during the Civil War, and the twisting of memory afterwards. Good treatment of the altercations between Southern women and Northern troops.
September 20, 2022
Very interesting point of view.
June 21, 2015
I originally wanted to read this ARC from Abbeville Press and Netgalley (in exchange for an honest review) because of the title Tara Revisited. I thought it would focus on the movie Gone With the Wind and other southern based films about the Civil War era and be full of illustrations. While the author does touch upon such topics and has numerous photographs, this book is actually about the southern myth surrounding plantation life and delves into the reality of life behind the Mason Dixon line before, during, and after the war, with an extra focus on the role of women during this time. I must admit, since the focus was different from my expectation, I set this book aside.
In the meantime, I had picked up another nonfiction Civil War book, Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy by Karen Abbott describing the lives of four women, 2 northerners, 2 southerners, who valiantly used their talents to assist the war efforts. Since I was listening to this book on tape, I decided that I wanted to fill in some of the gaps in my knowledge and found that Tara Revisited was a treasure trove of information.
It just goes to show that there is a right place and a right time to read certain books.
The premise of Tara Revisited: Women, War & the Plantation Legend by Catherine Clinton is that the legends of the old south perpetuate a revisionist, mythical version of life on the plantation. There is no such thing as Tara - either literally or figuratively. Life was tough for those supposedly pampered Southern belles who married young and then were expected to take over the domestic running of the plantation including the welfare of the slaves. During the Civil War they had to take on even more responsibilities as their husbands went off to war and often didn't return. When the Northern forces invaded their homeland, the brutality of war forced many from their homes. During reconstruction, the southern way of life drastically changed and the past became romanticized, reflected in the song Dixie (old times past and not forgotten) and sentimentalized in folklore, literature, and films which often were derogatory to African Americans. The symbols of the southern belle and her mammy continue to be glamorized in American culture, ignoring reality and the issue of civil rights.
This is the perfect time for the examination of the mindset of the South, especially with the current spate of racial atrocities being committed in various locations throughout the country, with minorities being targeted and even killed for minor or nonexistent infractions. The recent hate crime where a bible study group in a landmark black church in Charleston, South Carolina was gunned down, is just one example of the violence which comes from misinformation and the teaching of hatred towards minorities, especially African Americans.
When myths are accepted without question by mainstream society, misconceptions can easily lead to false conclusions. Tara Revisited attempts to explain the whys and wherefores and set the record straight. For example, Catherine Clinton provides some insight into the mystique which fuels the love of the Confederate Flag. The current call to remove this Flag from the SC State Capital building, because it is being used as a symbol of racism, not a tribute to the old south, is a step which is sure to be fought against tooth and nail. There is a multitude of research supporting the author who highlights the role of women with a focus on the details of their importance to the War effort. The concept of slavery, glamorized as a loving environment with the participants loyal to their "masters", is exposed.
This is a book chock full of information which is sure to delight the Civil War buff and enlighten the casual reader as well. Along with the citations is a long list of resources for those who want to do their own research. This book will force you to reexamine your views on American History. Four stars.
In the meantime, I had picked up another nonfiction Civil War book, Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy by Karen Abbott describing the lives of four women, 2 northerners, 2 southerners, who valiantly used their talents to assist the war efforts. Since I was listening to this book on tape, I decided that I wanted to fill in some of the gaps in my knowledge and found that Tara Revisited was a treasure trove of information.
It just goes to show that there is a right place and a right time to read certain books.
The premise of Tara Revisited: Women, War & the Plantation Legend by Catherine Clinton is that the legends of the old south perpetuate a revisionist, mythical version of life on the plantation. There is no such thing as Tara - either literally or figuratively. Life was tough for those supposedly pampered Southern belles who married young and then were expected to take over the domestic running of the plantation including the welfare of the slaves. During the Civil War they had to take on even more responsibilities as their husbands went off to war and often didn't return. When the Northern forces invaded their homeland, the brutality of war forced many from their homes. During reconstruction, the southern way of life drastically changed and the past became romanticized, reflected in the song Dixie (old times past and not forgotten) and sentimentalized in folklore, literature, and films which often were derogatory to African Americans. The symbols of the southern belle and her mammy continue to be glamorized in American culture, ignoring reality and the issue of civil rights.
This is the perfect time for the examination of the mindset of the South, especially with the current spate of racial atrocities being committed in various locations throughout the country, with minorities being targeted and even killed for minor or nonexistent infractions. The recent hate crime where a bible study group in a landmark black church in Charleston, South Carolina was gunned down, is just one example of the violence which comes from misinformation and the teaching of hatred towards minorities, especially African Americans.
When myths are accepted without question by mainstream society, misconceptions can easily lead to false conclusions. Tara Revisited attempts to explain the whys and wherefores and set the record straight. For example, Catherine Clinton provides some insight into the mystique which fuels the love of the Confederate Flag. The current call to remove this Flag from the SC State Capital building, because it is being used as a symbol of racism, not a tribute to the old south, is a step which is sure to be fought against tooth and nail. There is a multitude of research supporting the author who highlights the role of women with a focus on the details of their importance to the War effort. The concept of slavery, glamorized as a loving environment with the participants loyal to their "masters", is exposed.
This is a book chock full of information which is sure to delight the Civil War buff and enlighten the casual reader as well. Along with the citations is a long list of resources for those who want to do their own research. This book will force you to reexamine your views on American History. Four stars.
May 10, 2016
Tara Revisited explodes the myth of women’s role, both black and white, during the turbulent years of the Civil War and Reconstruction. From the “mammy” ideal and the idealized “happy darkies” content with plantation life to the notion of “steel magnolia” plantation mistresses proud and happy to lead in their husband’s absence, both are revealed as romanticized myth and propaganda that continues in various forms into the modern era. Relying heavily, to her credit, on primary sources involving letters and diaries, Clinton allows us to hear the pain of grief and loss as well as the ever-present danger of attack directly.
As enthusiasm at the beginning of war faded to dread after the first year, the idea that the war would be a short one gave way to the reality of a sustained campaign across thousands of miles. Women were left to cope as best they knew how, quickly becoming the backbone of the war effort serving in capacities that ranged from those of the more organized capacities such as nursing, ladies associations, sewing circles, etc. to those of a stealthier variety dedicated to spying and espionage.
Slaveholding mistresses were left behind without the plantations principal manager, her husband, and had to cope with the new task of managing in light of shortages, blockades, and runaway slaves. Poor white women fared no better; left destitute and desperate, they were locked in a daily ordeal to feed and care for their young sans the protection of their husband and father. Surviving letters show mothers in tragic circumstances with little options. Though there are far fewer primary sources from slaves, the innumerable slaves that bolted from plantations at the beginning of the war and noted in correspondence between white slaveholding women indicate that escape was the only option.
Clinton details the rarely heard stories of the women who, frustrated with red tape and seeing great need for care of the wounded, formed their own associations and opened hospitals and convalescent centers to tend to those in need. Most touching are the stories of women nursing soldiers, whose aid sometimes extended to prisoners of war. In one heart-wrenching chapter, the author wrote of a Confederate nurse who wrote to a Yankee mother informing her of the circumstances surrounding the death and burial of her son, and included a lock of his hair for the benefit of her remembrance. Clearly, empathy extended beyond the fields of battle where some were concerned.
As enthusiasm at the beginning of war faded to dread after the first year, the idea that the war would be a short one gave way to the reality of a sustained campaign across thousands of miles. Women were left to cope as best they knew how, quickly becoming the backbone of the war effort serving in capacities that ranged from those of the more organized capacities such as nursing, ladies associations, sewing circles, etc. to those of a stealthier variety dedicated to spying and espionage.
Slaveholding mistresses were left behind without the plantations principal manager, her husband, and had to cope with the new task of managing in light of shortages, blockades, and runaway slaves. Poor white women fared no better; left destitute and desperate, they were locked in a daily ordeal to feed and care for their young sans the protection of their husband and father. Surviving letters show mothers in tragic circumstances with little options. Though there are far fewer primary sources from slaves, the innumerable slaves that bolted from plantations at the beginning of the war and noted in correspondence between white slaveholding women indicate that escape was the only option.
Clinton details the rarely heard stories of the women who, frustrated with red tape and seeing great need for care of the wounded, formed their own associations and opened hospitals and convalescent centers to tend to those in need. Most touching are the stories of women nursing soldiers, whose aid sometimes extended to prisoners of war. In one heart-wrenching chapter, the author wrote of a Confederate nurse who wrote to a Yankee mother informing her of the circumstances surrounding the death and burial of her son, and included a lock of his hair for the benefit of her remembrance. Clearly, empathy extended beyond the fields of battle where some were concerned.
December 29, 2014
Catherine Clinton delves behind the myths and legends of the antebellum South to attempt to find some historical truths in this interesting book. She studies the facts about slavery, the women of the plantations and the cruelty of the Union forces to the people in the Confederacy. She notes that the Lost Cause remains popular even today, and how some of these myths are still promoted.
In the great TV mini-series, "North and South", one of the men from a plantation-owning family travels to the North where he is shocked to see the conditions of the black workers in the factories. He thinks that his family's slaves are better off, because they are fed and looked after. According to Clinton, this was one of the myths promoted by books such as North and South and one of my all-time favourite books, Gone With The Wind. Many of the slaves were abused, and thousands of them gladly joined the Union forces or hid Union soldiers and helped them to escape. Almost ninety thousand black men from Confederate states joined the Union troops. There were exceptions, however - I am sure that Gone With The Wind has some truth in it.
Union soldiers were not always cruel to the white women on the plantations. For example, one Union soldier helped a lonely woman find a cow to help feed an ailing baby. Another lady had to accompany a Union officer up the stairs during an inspection of her house. She had hidden her good silver cutlery beneath her hoops, and the spoons and forks suddenly fell out! The soldier helped her retrieve them. Many women had recollections of these sorts of kindnesses from Union forces.
This book was a bit dry, but I enjoyed reading about the real facts of the South. However, I am afraid that my heart remains at Tara!
In the great TV mini-series, "North and South", one of the men from a plantation-owning family travels to the North where he is shocked to see the conditions of the black workers in the factories. He thinks that his family's slaves are better off, because they are fed and looked after. According to Clinton, this was one of the myths promoted by books such as North and South and one of my all-time favourite books, Gone With The Wind. Many of the slaves were abused, and thousands of them gladly joined the Union forces or hid Union soldiers and helped them to escape. Almost ninety thousand black men from Confederate states joined the Union troops. There were exceptions, however - I am sure that Gone With The Wind has some truth in it.
Union soldiers were not always cruel to the white women on the plantations. For example, one Union soldier helped a lonely woman find a cow to help feed an ailing baby. Another lady had to accompany a Union officer up the stairs during an inspection of her house. She had hidden her good silver cutlery beneath her hoops, and the spoons and forks suddenly fell out! The soldier helped her retrieve them. Many women had recollections of these sorts of kindnesses from Union forces.
This book was a bit dry, but I enjoyed reading about the real facts of the South. However, I am afraid that my heart remains at Tara!
July 21, 2013
Any mention of the American Civil war instantly brings to mind scenes from Gone with the Wind, romantic southern belles and devoted black slaves. That Hollywood image has been perpetuated through countless misleading films and books, and here Catherine Clinton attempts to put the record straight. The book examines the lives of southern women, both black and white, as they really were, and describes the often devastating but sometimes empowering effect the war had on them.
Drawing on a number of historical sources – letters, diaries, slave narratives – the author presents us with a vivid cultural and social history of the period, from the cotton fields to the battlefields. Photographs, drawings and other illustrations help to bring the period to life. Clinton examines the development of the Tara myth – the belief that plantation life consisted of happy slaves and benign owners, and that all the women were exemplars of gracious and saintly womanhood. That myth still lingers although it has long been discredited, and Clinton also tries to discover why that is so. She shows how the myth has developed over time and how that idealization of antebellum life persists to this day.
This is light and very readable history of an age, backed up by in depth historical research, and will be of interest to both scholars and less informed readers. It is both enjoyable and educational and I am grateful to Netgalley for bringing it to my attention.
Drawing on a number of historical sources – letters, diaries, slave narratives – the author presents us with a vivid cultural and social history of the period, from the cotton fields to the battlefields. Photographs, drawings and other illustrations help to bring the period to life. Clinton examines the development of the Tara myth – the belief that plantation life consisted of happy slaves and benign owners, and that all the women were exemplars of gracious and saintly womanhood. That myth still lingers although it has long been discredited, and Clinton also tries to discover why that is so. She shows how the myth has developed over time and how that idealization of antebellum life persists to this day.
This is light and very readable history of an age, backed up by in depth historical research, and will be of interest to both scholars and less informed readers. It is both enjoyable and educational and I am grateful to Netgalley for bringing it to my attention.
September 18, 2013
I found it very readable, informative and enjoyable. A lot of the book was about how the myth of the happy plantation was created.
However, I felt the book really two book that were combined into one.
One part of the book was trying to find out about the lives of white plantation women and their experiences of running plantations and the war. These women were presented in a somewhat sympathetic way.
The other part of the books was on the evils of slavery and that it is a myth about the "happy" slave.
As a white northerner I don't object to books that show white southerners in a more three dimensional way -neither saints nor villians.
However to me it seemed that a white southern woman who does a good job of running a plantation is probably exploiting her slaves and I thought that was a contradiction that was in the book.
I felt a book about rich southern women should be in a separate book than those describing the slaves.
However, I felt the book really two book that were combined into one.
One part of the book was trying to find out about the lives of white plantation women and their experiences of running plantations and the war. These women were presented in a somewhat sympathetic way.
The other part of the books was on the evils of slavery and that it is a myth about the "happy" slave.
As a white northerner I don't object to books that show white southerners in a more three dimensional way -neither saints nor villians.
However to me it seemed that a white southern woman who does a good job of running a plantation is probably exploiting her slaves and I thought that was a contradiction that was in the book.
I felt a book about rich southern women should be in a separate book than those describing the slaves.
September 25, 2016
Tara Revisited showed me the other half of the story Margaret Mitchell told of Scarlett and Melanie and Ashley and Rhett. The hardships in the fictional Gone With the Wind were really quite minimal when compared to the actual difficulties the plantation mistresses and their slaves had to endure. Even though the many books and movies about the South tell of a slower paced time, fast horses, house parties, and plenty of barbecue.
Though some women used their position in society to work for the war effort, most women were too busy simply trying to survive. During this uncertain and dangerous time, black women were in an even more precarious position, always with the possibility of being separated from family and sent away hanging over them.
I found this book very interesting, and I appreciated the chance to see behind the movie-produced fantasies to see the raw strength and courage of these women.
Though some women used their position in society to work for the war effort, most women were too busy simply trying to survive. During this uncertain and dangerous time, black women were in an even more precarious position, always with the possibility of being separated from family and sent away hanging over them.
I found this book very interesting, and I appreciated the chance to see behind the movie-produced fantasies to see the raw strength and courage of these women.
December 31, 2014
Thanks to the publisher for an advance ebook reading copy.
I was only vaguely aware of the Lost Cause movement in the South, and really enjoyed learning more about the efforts of Southerners to re-imagine their history after the Civil War, and how Northerners encouraged it. The historic sites I've visited while living in the South have made sure to point out the slave labor that was utilized to build and maintain these homes, but most people visit because they're caught up in the "romance" of the Old South. I've absolutely been guilty of this as well. At times I felt that the book became a too subjective in its approach, but the history of the black and white women that survived the war and their efforts to rebuild a life afterward were completely fascinating.
I was only vaguely aware of the Lost Cause movement in the South, and really enjoyed learning more about the efforts of Southerners to re-imagine their history after the Civil War, and how Northerners encouraged it. The historic sites I've visited while living in the South have made sure to point out the slave labor that was utilized to build and maintain these homes, but most people visit because they're caught up in the "romance" of the Old South. I've absolutely been guilty of this as well. At times I felt that the book became a too subjective in its approach, but the history of the black and white women that survived the war and their efforts to rebuild a life afterward were completely fascinating.
July 9, 2014
Tara Revisited
Women, War & the Plantation Legend
Copyright 2013
Tara Revisited gives us a look at southern woman during the Civil War. This book shows what it was like both for the enslaved Women and their mistresses while thd men of the plantation were away fighting.
We learn that most white southern wome even wives of slave owners did not usually live on plantations but in more modest dwellings.
In Tara Revisited we will learn that 200,000 colored men served iin the Union Army.
By the end of the Civol War there were 8000 famiies destitute in Atlanta alone
If you are looking for a book on the lives of southern women during the civil war then Tara Revisited is the book for you.
Five out of five stars
Women, War & the Plantation Legend
Copyright 2013
Tara Revisited gives us a look at southern woman during the Civil War. This book shows what it was like both for the enslaved Women and their mistresses while thd men of the plantation were away fighting.
We learn that most white southern wome even wives of slave owners did not usually live on plantations but in more modest dwellings.
In Tara Revisited we will learn that 200,000 colored men served iin the Union Army.
By the end of the Civol War there were 8000 famiies destitute in Atlanta alone
If you are looking for a book on the lives of southern women during the civil war then Tara Revisited is the book for you.
Five out of five stars
July 26, 2016
I received this book as an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
This book was an amazingly fast read for being a history book. It was nicely written and I loved the pictures in the text to show the details being discussed. I learned a lot about the Civil War that I did not know. Since I was not raised in the south, I did not know there were other names for the Civil War and how that came to be. I do now as they are discussed in the book. I also did see where the "southern gentleman" came from as this is still very much alive in the south and in the fabric of southern communities.
Overall, it was not what I was expecting, but I did enjoy it nonetheless.
This book was an amazingly fast read for being a history book. It was nicely written and I loved the pictures in the text to show the details being discussed. I learned a lot about the Civil War that I did not know. Since I was not raised in the south, I did not know there were other names for the Civil War and how that came to be. I do now as they are discussed in the book. I also did see where the "southern gentleman" came from as this is still very much alive in the south and in the fabric of southern communities.
Overall, it was not what I was expecting, but I did enjoy it nonetheless.
August 6, 2016
For many of us, we have certain images in our mind how the South was back before the Civil War. We have images of women sitting on porches drinking mint juleps and have lavish parties and balls.
Unfortunately, that is just an illusion that Hollywood created to gloss over the harsh facts of reality. Catherine Clinton shows us through crystal clear lenses the truth of how women (of all races) were treated back in the Antebellum South.
It wasn't all days of wine and roses even for the wives of the Plantation masters. This book will definitely open your eyes and show us how much our educational system really doesn't teach us.
Unfortunately, that is just an illusion that Hollywood created to gloss over the harsh facts of reality. Catherine Clinton shows us through crystal clear lenses the truth of how women (of all races) were treated back in the Antebellum South.
It wasn't all days of wine and roses even for the wives of the Plantation masters. This book will definitely open your eyes and show us how much our educational system really doesn't teach us.
June 23, 2014
This look at the south during the America Civil War with rose colored glasses removed was fascinating to read and at the same time slightly uncomfortable. It trains a great deal of its focus on the women of the plantations and what it was like for them throughout the many years of hardship during and after the war. The issue of slavery in this country is such a a huge and complex subject that it is impossible for any one book to cover everything, but I think this one did a wonderful job of looking at things from a slightly different angle, and educating the reader on information they may or may not know about those years.
April 10, 2008
Hollywood movies like "Gone with the Wind" glorified the Southern antebellum plantation. Reality, there were few glamorous plantations like Tara. Although not the best historical account, I did get a lot out of it including some referrals for further reading, eg "Wind Done Gone" -- the black version to GWTW.
August 15, 2013
Read my full review: http://bit.ly/1gDzthv
My opinion: Although I knew the better chunk of this information already, I loved the first hand accounts and the plentiful pictures the author provided to supplement this well researched book. I love putting a face/name of the Civil War. I have already read several hundred books on the Civil War. This book would be awesome to show the strength of women during this period of time instead of only focusing on Rosy the Riveter from WWII.
My opinion: Although I knew the better chunk of this information already, I loved the first hand accounts and the plentiful pictures the author provided to supplement this well researched book. I love putting a face/name of the Civil War. I have already read several hundred books on the Civil War. This book would be awesome to show the strength of women during this period of time instead of only focusing on Rosy the Riveter from WWII.
September 26, 2014
Given To Me For An Honest Review
Tara Revisited: Women, War, & the Plantation Legend by Catherine Clinton really was not what I thought it was going to be about. I feel that using Gone With The Wind as an example of the South shouldn't be. You have to remember that movie was just "Hollywood". I don't think it should be used to look at that time of history.
This book seems to be one-sided and I feel that is could be re-written to give a clearer view of the South.
Tara Revisited: Women, War, & the Plantation Legend by Catherine Clinton really was not what I thought it was going to be about. I feel that using Gone With The Wind as an example of the South shouldn't be. You have to remember that movie was just "Hollywood". I don't think it should be used to look at that time of history.
This book seems to be one-sided and I feel that is could be re-written to give a clearer view of the South.
December 23, 2015
A wonderful book charting life in the Southern States during the Civil War.
Focussing on the women who lived, worked and fought with and for the Confederate Army.
A great document using narrative and photographs of a little known account of the so called Southern Belles who are not written about in Hollywood films.
I was given a digital copy of this book by the publisher Abbeville Press via Netgalley in return for an honest unbiased review.
Focussing on the women who lived, worked and fought with and for the Confederate Army.
A great document using narrative and photographs of a little known account of the so called Southern Belles who are not written about in Hollywood films.
I was given a digital copy of this book by the publisher Abbeville Press via Netgalley in return for an honest unbiased review.
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