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"Our Blood Would Rise Up & Drive Them Away:" Slaveholding Women Of South Carolina In The Civil War, Nicole M. Lenart

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

Southern slaveholding women during the Civil War are usually portrayed as either Eve or the Virgin Mary. They are either depicted as staunch patriotic wives and mothers who out of love suffered and sacrificed most of their worldly goods for the Cause, or as weak-willed creatures who gave up on the war, asked their men to come home, and concerned themselves with getting pretty dresses from the blockade runners and dancing at elaborate balls and bazaars. This latter view, which seems cut so superficially from Gone With the Wind, is nevertheless one that is common in Civil War scholarship …