Contents:
Language English View all editions Prev Next edition 3 of 3. Check copyright status Cite this Title Tara revisited: Author Clinton, Catherine, Edition 1st ed. Subjects American Civil War Vrouwen. Women -- Confederate States of America. Plantation life -- Southern States -- History -- 19th century. Women -- Southern States -- History -- 19th century. United States -- Confederate States of America. Summary 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. Notes Map on lining papers. Includes bibliographical references and index.
View online Borrow Buy Freely available Show 0 more links Set up My libraries How do I set up "My libraries"? These 9 locations in All: La Trobe University Library. Borchardt Library, Melbourne Bundoora Campus. Open to the public ; Open to the public N University of Sydney Library. Open to the public. These 4 locations in New South Wales: This single location in Queensland: Open to the public Book; Illustrated English Show 0 more libraries Clinton, Abbeville Press and Netgalley for giving me a free copy of this book to read and give my honest review.
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. Oct 06, Jim Drewery rated it really liked it. 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 a 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.
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.
Tara Revisited: Women, War, & the Plantation Legend [Catherine Clinton, Henry Louis Gates Jr.] on www.farmersmarketmusic.com *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Tara Revisited has ratings and 39 reviews. Lois said: This book is honestly an insult. It's at least 80% about white women who owned plantations in.
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 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. Clinton, 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 latter, written by Mary Eastman in , 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 , that were combined by D.
Griffith in his 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 '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. Oprah Winfrey began her meteoric rise in the mid'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.
Dec 11, Stan Prager rated it really liked it. 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 Review of: The preceding is the title card screen prologue to a 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! In her highly original, thought-provocative study, Tara Revisited: 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. 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: 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! The living breathing cheerleaders of this fantasy are the United Daughters of the Confederacy UDC , an organization founded in 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 s.
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. 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. I highly recommend it. Jun 13, Ellen Klock rated it really liked it.
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 b I originally wanted to read this ARC from Abbeville Press and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review because of the title Tara Revisited. 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: 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. Jul 16, Joyce Lagow rated it really liked it Shelves: Clinton calls it the myth of Tara , claiming that the Hollywood images are not only misleading but represent revisionist history, rewritten to serve the interests of the defeated Southern population. Southern culture exaggerated the status of Southern white women to an impossibly elevated status, of purity, genteel behavior and dependency. Such women were almost nonexistent in the antebellum South; only a very few had such privileged status.
Reality for Southern women,both black and white, was hard work, even for women who were wives of plantation owners. With the defeat of the South and the advent of the hated Reconstruction, Southern writers immediately began romanticizing the plantation and slave experiences; some of the most outrageous are slave memoirs that were written by whites!
Turned into a movie by David Selznick who did consult with the NAACP on the script and brilliantly acted by Hattie McDanile, who won an Academy Award for her portrayal as Mammy and Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O Hara, Tara seized hold of both the Southern and Northern imagination for different reasons and became an icon of a South that never was, and remains so to this day; visitors to Georgia still ask for the location of Tara.
May 10, Amy rated it it was amazing. 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. 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. Dec 28, Lisa rated it liked it. 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 Nor Catherine Clinton delves behind the myths and legends of the antebellum South to attempt to find some historical truths in this interesting book.
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. 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!
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. 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. I've absolutely been guilty of this as well. Sep 26, Marjorie rated it liked it. Photographs, drawings, prints, and other period illustrations bring this buried chapter of Civil War history to life, taking the reader from the cotton fields to the hearthsides, from shrapnel-riddled mansions to slave cabins. The living breathing cheerleaders of this fantasy are the United Daughters of the Confederacy UDC , an organization founded in to celebrate Confederate culture that continues to thrive today. If you have any interest whatsoever in the American Civil War, you need this book.
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! Jul 20, Mandy rated it really liked it. 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 h Any mention of the American Civil war instantly brings to mind scenes from Gone with the Wind, romantic southern belles and devoted black slaves. 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. 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" slav I found it very readable, informative and enjoyable.
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.
Sep 24, Mary rated it really liked it. 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 Tara Revisited showed me the other half of the story Margaret Mitchell told of Scarlett and Melanie and Ashley and Rhett. 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. 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 Thanks to the publisher for an advance ebook reading copy.
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.
Jul 09, Michelle Kidwell rated it it was amazing. This book shows what it was like both for the enslaved Women and their mistresses while thd men of the plantation were away fighting. In Tara Revisited we will learn that , colored men served iin the Union Army.