Under Construction @ Keele 2019 summer 2019, vol 5 issue 1 | Page 8

Angels of the Confederacy? White Women and the Fall of Southern Nationalism
Rebecca Pierce
Outside of the South Carolina state capital building, sits a bronze monument to the
women of the Confederate south. It is one of the few of its kind, for although no
southerner was able to escape the social upheaval that the Civil War caused, the
story of the Confederate victories, and defeats, sit firmly on the shoulders of a few
wealthy white men. When women are remembered, it is as unwavering southern
patriots, often dubbed as the ‘Angels of the Confederacy’. Recently, scholars have
begun to move away from historical narratives centred upon such an exclusive
group of men- no longer arguing for a Confederate war effort that lived and died
with its leaders. And yet, gender dynamics are still often overlooked, or
underdeveloped. Many historians of the South have begun to question if the Civil
War was lost not on the battlefield, but on the home front; but despite the fact
that the home front was overwhelmingly female, explicit links between women and
confederate failure are still not always drawn. This paper seeks to explore the role
of both rich and poor white women in the southern defeat, and question if they
were really the ‘Angels of the Confederacy’ or divisive agents?
Keywords | Civil War America, Women, Home Front, Nationalism, Confederate
War and violent conflicts are often considered to be exclusively male spaces, and despite the
fact that Southern women did receive some recognition for their contributions to the
Confederate war effort, they are still largely excluded from the historical narrative. When
attempting to decipher the reason for the Confederate defeat, historians have pointed to
several different factors ranging from poor leadership and internal struggles to failing
nationalism, and problems on the home front. In fact, historians have frequently debated
whether or not the Confederates lost the civil war, because of issues on the home front. And
yet, the gender dynamic here is commonly ignored, with explicit links between women and
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