Under Construction @ Keele 2019 summer 2019, vol 5 issue 1 | Page 17

mean that it did not have catastrophic consequences for the nationalism of other women.
The catastrophic consequences that this had for the morale of the poor were unintended and
could have been avoided had the Confederate leaders adopted a more egalitarian approach
in the first place. The food riots were the first example of women actively and intentionally
creating problems for the Confederacy, and although it certainly caused trouble for the
southern leadership, the further depletion of morale was by far the most dangerous
consequence. The wealthy had more to gain from Confederate victory, and subsequently, it
is unsurprising that elite women's investment in the Confederacy outlasted the patriotism of
their social inferiors. With that being said, the harsh realities of war infiltrated every level of
southern society eventually, leading to a loss of nationalism on all fronts and for women to
begin encouraging desertion. Although by encouraging abandonment, women may have
dealt the fatal blow to the Confederacy, Faust’s claim that “it may well have been because of
its women that the South lost the Civil War” certainly seems to ring true. 23 Southern women
were most certainly not the angels of self-sacrifice that they are often thought to be, but their
turn towards dissent was near always provoked by leaders who continuously neglected, and
did not understand them.
23
Drew Gilpin Faust, ‘Altars of Sacrifice: Confederate Women and the Narratives of War’, The Journal of
American History, Vol. 76, No. 4 (Mar., 1990), p.228
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