Hard Women, Hard War

Hard Women, Hard War establishes a new interpretation of Southern women’s wartime behavior by examining their interactions with the Federal army. From the very beginning of the war to the bitter end of the conflict, women negotiated military policy toward civilians, motivated by their political loyalties, which were grounded in their ideas of home. Free and enslaved Black women encouraged Federals to destroy the plantation household to make way for homes built in freedom, pushing the military to make hard war on unrepentant rebels. White Unionist enslavers’ loyalty to the United States was predicated on protection of their homes and human property, and when the army moved toward harsher war policies, these women emulated the defiance of elite Confederate ladies. White women’s treason spurred the army to collaborate with loyal Black women while visiting destruction on disloyal enslaving women. Even as the war became more destructive, Southern women refused to stay on the sidelines, insisting that war compelled them to move outside their homes to defend their homes. Women’s very existence—as wealthy enslavers or someone else’s property—hung in the balance, and these hard women waged a hard war to secure future privilege or future freedom.