JPK Huson 1863
Brev. Brig. Gen'l
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2012
- Location
- Central Pennsylvania
Found some thought provoking articles on Southern wives and husbands, soldiers and widows. There's a perspective out there, that so many Southern men perished in the war, women remained war widows and young girls coming of age during and just after the war had a difficult time, realizing the married life those before and after them took for granted.
This is very cool, from a North Carolina paper. NC was the state to raise to rise Holy Heck when support was withdrawn for families of soldiers- you see there was strong sentiment there.
Era periodicals variously proclaimed disaster or reassured an anxious population. Unsurprising, given that the tragic consequences of an endless war were brought as shattering news stories with distressing regularity. Because the South had less population to draw on than the North, these took their toll in forms other than statistics.
North Carolina again, 1863. Funny, every article I found published about concern for war widows was out of a North Carolina paper. It is not the topic of the thread, just found it interesting. I'm not saying the other states were missing the care, NC most obvious in newspapers, keeping soldiers, families and widows concerns front and center.
For some reason I think she was from the South although now cannot track her down.
Common sense, gosh, tells us how entire communities would certainly have an awful time- how could it not be the case? How do you break these village-wide tragedies down into numbers and stats? Northern villages suffered in the same way, too, not quite as commonly. But they did. Widows and young girls there, certainly, for whatever reasons, plural, did not resume life's spring through winter patterns as would have been the case had not war robbed all, of all. Just look at this;
" The 26th North Carolina, hailing from seven counties in the western part of the state, suffered 714 casualties out of 800 men during the Battle of Gettysburg. The 24th Michigan squared off against the 26th North Carolina at Gettysburg and lost 362 out of 496 men. Nearly the entire student body of Ole Miss--135 out 139--enlisted in Company A of the 11th Mississippi. Company A, also known as the "University Greys" suffered 100% casualties in Pickett's Charge. Eighteen members of the Christian family of Christianburg, Virginia were killed during the war. It is estimated that one in three Southern households lost at least one family member. "
http://www.civilwar.org/education/civil-war-casualties.html
I don't know. This next article seems to go back and forth, or at least do that ' thing ' where a significant amount of lives were affected but they are a little dismissed. Each one of the numbers in any statistic is a person- that woman has a life, that life was made different by the war. Like this below; Which is fine but begs the question on who and how much?
" Thus, despite its enormous death toll, the war had a modest, short-lived effect on the timing and incidence of first marriage. " (* Is that true? And what does it mean, if so- who are the women included in those numbers? )
"On one hand, for a brief period after the war, southern men who had survived the conflict enjoyed demographic advantages in the search for a wife. ( * the guys' perspective... )Relative to southern men born a generation earlier or later, white men in the postwar South had more potential spouses to choose from and married at a slightly younger age. On the other hand, unmarried southern white women in their twenties at the outbreak of the war faced an acute shortage of available men after the war. Unsurprisingly, a small number of women in this cohort delayed marriage or compromised on marriage partners. The vast majority eventually married, however, and the war did not create a large cohort of lifelong spinsters or so-called maiden aunts. Although available census data limit the analysis of the timing and incidence of first marriage, an analysis of widowhood in the 1880 and later censuses suggests that many women widowed during or after the war were unable to remarry.
High levels of widowhood in the postwar South among relatively young women probably reflects both high death rates of southern men during the war and low remarriage rates of southern widows afterward.
for every 100 southern white women expected to be entering marriage in 1870 there would be just 70 southern white men.
Nearly one in three southern white women over the age of 40 were currently widowed in 1880. "
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3002115/
I'm not sure we can always break people and tragedy into numbers- as ' numbers ', certainly. Bet a lot there are more personal reasons behind the rest of that article. Guessing areas of the South did not rebound as well as stated- and not merely because it became repopulated. Our country suffered a human event of massive proportions. How do you log numbers in connection to that?
Deep mourning, like so, so many.
A Union widow, not out of place here, to indicate pain across our country.
North Carolina, 1865
North Carolina 1864
Texas, making an amendment, supporting widows. Printed in a NC paper.
This is very cool, from a North Carolina paper. NC was the state to raise to rise Holy Heck when support was withdrawn for families of soldiers- you see there was strong sentiment there.
Era periodicals variously proclaimed disaster or reassured an anxious population. Unsurprising, given that the tragic consequences of an endless war were brought as shattering news stories with distressing regularity. Because the South had less population to draw on than the North, these took their toll in forms other than statistics.
North Carolina again, 1863. Funny, every article I found published about concern for war widows was out of a North Carolina paper. It is not the topic of the thread, just found it interesting. I'm not saying the other states were missing the care, NC most obvious in newspapers, keeping soldiers, families and widows concerns front and center.
For some reason I think she was from the South although now cannot track her down.
Common sense, gosh, tells us how entire communities would certainly have an awful time- how could it not be the case? How do you break these village-wide tragedies down into numbers and stats? Northern villages suffered in the same way, too, not quite as commonly. But they did. Widows and young girls there, certainly, for whatever reasons, plural, did not resume life's spring through winter patterns as would have been the case had not war robbed all, of all. Just look at this;
" The 26th North Carolina, hailing from seven counties in the western part of the state, suffered 714 casualties out of 800 men during the Battle of Gettysburg. The 24th Michigan squared off against the 26th North Carolina at Gettysburg and lost 362 out of 496 men. Nearly the entire student body of Ole Miss--135 out 139--enlisted in Company A of the 11th Mississippi. Company A, also known as the "University Greys" suffered 100% casualties in Pickett's Charge. Eighteen members of the Christian family of Christianburg, Virginia were killed during the war. It is estimated that one in three Southern households lost at least one family member. "
http://www.civilwar.org/education/civil-war-casualties.html
I don't know. This next article seems to go back and forth, or at least do that ' thing ' where a significant amount of lives were affected but they are a little dismissed. Each one of the numbers in any statistic is a person- that woman has a life, that life was made different by the war. Like this below; Which is fine but begs the question on who and how much?
" Thus, despite its enormous death toll, the war had a modest, short-lived effect on the timing and incidence of first marriage. " (* Is that true? And what does it mean, if so- who are the women included in those numbers? )
"On one hand, for a brief period after the war, southern men who had survived the conflict enjoyed demographic advantages in the search for a wife. ( * the guys' perspective... )Relative to southern men born a generation earlier or later, white men in the postwar South had more potential spouses to choose from and married at a slightly younger age. On the other hand, unmarried southern white women in their twenties at the outbreak of the war faced an acute shortage of available men after the war. Unsurprisingly, a small number of women in this cohort delayed marriage or compromised on marriage partners. The vast majority eventually married, however, and the war did not create a large cohort of lifelong spinsters or so-called maiden aunts. Although available census data limit the analysis of the timing and incidence of first marriage, an analysis of widowhood in the 1880 and later censuses suggests that many women widowed during or after the war were unable to remarry.
High levels of widowhood in the postwar South among relatively young women probably reflects both high death rates of southern men during the war and low remarriage rates of southern widows afterward.
for every 100 southern white women expected to be entering marriage in 1870 there would be just 70 southern white men.
Nearly one in three southern white women over the age of 40 were currently widowed in 1880. "
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3002115/
I'm not sure we can always break people and tragedy into numbers- as ' numbers ', certainly. Bet a lot there are more personal reasons behind the rest of that article. Guessing areas of the South did not rebound as well as stated- and not merely because it became repopulated. Our country suffered a human event of massive proportions. How do you log numbers in connection to that?
Deep mourning, like so, so many.
A Union widow, not out of place here, to indicate pain across our country.
North Carolina, 1865
North Carolina 1864
Texas, making an amendment, supporting widows. Printed in a NC paper.
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