Under Construction @ Keele 2019 summer 2019, vol 5 issue 1 | Page 15

quickly set up, the damage had been done, and any remaining hope in the government was
snuffed out. Having lost all hope women soon ceased their self-sacrificing behaviour and
began to stop shielding their husbands on the front lines, from the harsh realities of life on
the home front. 16
With a defeat on the horizon and a conflict that was no longer glorious but a
“massacres sans resultat”, desertion rates began to increase exponentially from 1864. 17
Although, it is men who are the ones who desert, that is not to say that women did not have
a hand in encouraging and facilitating them. In fact, one Confederate official in North Carolina
went as far as to lay the blame for desertion entirely upon the shoulders of southern women,
stating that "desertion exists because desertion is encouraged...And though the ladies may
not be willing to concede the fact, they are nevertheless responsible." 18 . Although such a
comment is clearly indicative of prevailing patriarchal views and a desire to pass blame away
from the failures of the Confederate leaders, it is undeniable that women certainly had a part
to play in the rates of desertion. By 1864 “many women, especially those of the lower and
middling orders were not just holding husbands and brothers back from service but were
actively urging them to desert." 19 Although one can quite rightly argue that, men would be
unlikely to desert if they did not already have some inclination to do so, it must be
acknowledged that, even in the lower and middling classes, concepts of honour were vital to
southern society. Women who had at the outbreak of the war, sent hoop skirts to men who
failed to volunteer, were now begging for their return home. This is heavily symbolic and
shows that by actively encouraging their menfolk to desert, women had removed the social
16
Faust, Mothers of Invention, p.62
Drew Gilpin Faust, ‘Patriotism, Sacrifice, and Self-Interest’, in Michael Perman (ed) Major Problems in the
Civil War and Reconstruction, New York, Wadsworth, 2011, p.260
18
Faust, Mothers Of Invention, p.243
19
Ibid.
17
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