Women, The War And Ladies Tea

JPK Huson 1863

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
Joined
Feb 14, 2012
Location
Central Pennsylvania
bee queen.jpg

Just a reminder, please, from one of the hosts.

With apologies to @Bee , who forgivably holds copyright on the image. :giggle: Borrowing this ( from Hathi ) as one of the hosts of Ladies Tea and ask indulgence. We're entrusted with Ladies Tea's positive direction, at least.

As it states in our introduction, Ladies Tea is for pretty much the entire world, Ladies, men, bugs, if they can read- History buffs with an interest in what the war held, comprehensively, for women.

Women had a terrible war. Please no one make the mistake anyone is sleeping at the wheel or some great revelation has been missed. Elizabeth Masser Thorn of Gettysburg was a poor immigrant woman. Her boss was wealthy, powerful and dismissive of er, underlings. Burying over 100 men in blazing heat that July was an order, ' or else '. She'd already spent the battle being shoved around by generals from two armies. Lydia Hamilton and Becky Palmer are not well known Gettysburg names. They should be. Black women, Lydia begged food and a wagon and spent days feeding wounded. Becky escaped the Confederate army and being sold into an enslaved war.

Why were there so many prostitutes? Food. Very young girls were forced into prostitution. To eat. Homes gone, men gone. Poor women, middle class women- elite women. These histories are simply found. We bring them here, to share because these stories of women in the war simply must be told.

Without disclaimers, this awful war swept our country like a bloody, social, psychological, sociological and physical tsunami. 150 years later, we're still holding on to trees while flotsam washes past us on the way out to sea. We're still claiming precedence on the part of victims, too. And while that's a little crazy it's opinion. That's fine.

I'm seeing contention about and contempt for Southern elite women. This is taking the form of ' Who's on First ', who suffered more, who wrote a book addressing one form of suffering and why others were ignored, why Southern elite women did not deserve to claim suffering and how this is becoming a verboten topic.

While I understand it is easy to be drawn into vile injustices committed 150 years ago, and we should speak of them, becoming indignant to the point of becoming exclusionary is really, bullying dead people? I'm a little loathe to be put in the position of ' defending ' anyone at all. We are so, so easily divided. A woman, who lost everything, sons and husband away at war or dead, has a story. If she lived in Vermont, she has a story. If she lived in Mississippi, she has a story. These stories deserve to be told one by one. The war was loss and grief. When we begin comparing suffering, we allow ourselves to be divided. A Southern, elite woman dragged my uncle, Seward's secretary, home from Liggon's prison, with Typhoid. When he died in her home, she buried him in her family plot, at Shocktoe. She lost everything in the war. Her name was Elizabeth Van Lew.

Point being, it would be very good to try to keep Ladies Tea a positive forum, working to be inclusive of women's experiences during the war. Should there be an outside source not agreed with, a thread on the topic is the place to discuss this. Our membership, not to mention the many browsers who find their way here, have ancestors whose stories include these women.

Brass once encouraged how positive this posting has been over the years- compliment? Oi. It now feels more of a responsibility than ever.
 
View attachment 146477
Just a reminder, please, from one of the hosts.

With apologies to @Bee , who forgivably holds copyright on the image. :giggle: Borrowing this ( from Hathi ) as one of the hosts of Ladies Tea and ask indulgence. We're entrusted with Ladies Tea's positive direction, at least.

As it states in our introduction, Ladies Tea is for pretty much the entire world, Ladies, men, bugs, if they can read- History buffs with an interest in what the war held, comprehensively, for women.

Women had a terrible war. Please no one make the mistake anyone is sleeping at the wheel or some great revelation has been missed. Elizabeth Masser Thorn of Gettysburg was a poor immigrant woman. Her boss was wealthy, powerful and dismissive of er, underlings. Burying over 100 men in blazing heat that July was an order, ' or else '. She'd already spent the battle being shoved around by generals from two armies. Lydia Hamilton and Becky Palmer are not well known Gettysburg names. They should be. Black women, Lydia begged food and a wagon and spent days feeding wounded. Becky escaped the Confederate army and being sold into an enslaved war.

Why were there so many prostitutes? Food. Very young girls were forced into prostitution. To eat. Homes gone, men gone. Poor women, middle class women- elite women. These histories are simply found. We bring them here, to share because these stories of women in the war simply must be told.

Without disclaimers, this awful war swept our country like a bloody, social, psychological, sociological and physical tsunami. 150 years later, we're still holding on to trees while flotsam washes past us on the way out to sea. We're still claiming precedence on the part of victims, too. And while that's a little crazy it's opinion. That's fine.

I'm seeing contention about and contempt for Southern elite women. This is taking the form of ' Who's on First ', who suffered more, who wrote a book addressing one form of suffering and why others were ignored, why Southern elite women did not deserve to claim suffering and how this is becoming a verboten topic.

While I understand it is easy to be drawn into vile injustices committed 150 years ago, and we should speak of them, becoming indignant to the point of becoming exclusionary is really, bullying dead people? I'm a little loathe to be put in the position of ' defending ' anyone at all. We are so, so easily divided. A woman, who lost everything, sons and husband away at war or dead, has a story. If she lived in Vermont, she has a story. If she lived in Mississippi, she has a story. These stories deserve to be told one by one. The war was loss and grief. When we begin comparing suffering, we allow ourselves to be divided. A Southern, elite woman dragged my uncle, Seward's secretary, home from Liggon's prison, with Typhoid. When he died in her home, she buried him in her family plot, at Shocktoe. She lost everything in the war. Her name was Elizabeth Van Lew.

Point being, it would be very good to try to keep Ladies Tea a positive forum, working to be inclusive of women's experiences during the war. Should there be an outside source not agreed with, a thread on the topic is the place to discuss this. Our membership, not to mention the many browsers who find their way here, have ancestors whose stories include these women.

Brass once encouraged how positive this posting has been over the years- compliment? Oi. It now feels more of a responsibility than ever.
Well said and well written.
 
View attachment 146477
Just a reminder, please, from one of the hosts.

With apologies to @Bee , who forgivably holds copyright on the image. :giggle: Borrowing this ( from Hathi ) as one of the hosts of Ladies Tea and ask indulgence. We're entrusted with Ladies Tea's positive direction, at least.

As it states in our introduction, Ladies Tea is for pretty much the entire world, Ladies, men, bugs, if they can read- History buffs with an interest in what the war held, comprehensively, for women.

Women had a terrible war. Please no one make the mistake anyone is sleeping at the wheel or some great revelation has been missed. Elizabeth Masser Thorn of Gettysburg was a poor immigrant woman. Her boss was wealthy, powerful and dismissive of er, underlings. Burying over 100 men in blazing heat that July was an order, ' or else '. She'd already spent the battle being shoved around by generals from two armies. Lydia Hamilton and Becky Palmer are not well known Gettysburg names. They should be. Black women, Lydia begged food and a wagon and spent days feeding wounded. Becky escaped the Confederate army and being sold into an enslaved war.

Why were there so many prostitutes? Food. Very young girls were forced into prostitution. To eat. Homes gone, men gone. Poor women, middle class women- elite women. These histories are simply found. We bring them here, to share because these stories of women in the war simply must be told.

Without disclaimers, this awful war swept our country like a bloody, social, psychological, sociological and physical tsunami. 150 years later, we're still holding on to trees while flotsam washes past us on the way out to sea. We're still claiming precedence on the part of victims, too. And while that's a little crazy it's opinion. That's fine.

I'm seeing contention about and contempt for Southern elite women. This is taking the form of ' Who's on First ', who suffered more, who wrote a book addressing one form of suffering and why others were ignored, why Southern elite women did not deserve to claim suffering and how this is becoming a verboten topic.

While I understand it is easy to be drawn into vile injustices committed 150 years ago, and we should speak of them, becoming indignant to the point of becoming exclusionary is really, bullying dead people? I'm a little loathe to be put in the position of ' defending ' anyone at all. We are so, so easily divided. A woman, who lost everything, sons and husband away at war or dead, has a story. If she lived in Vermont, she has a story. If she lived in Mississippi, she has a story. These stories deserve to be told one by one. The war was loss and grief. When we begin comparing suffering, we allow ourselves to be divided. A Southern, elite woman dragged my uncle, Seward's secretary, home from Liggon's prison, with Typhoid. When he died in her home, she buried him in her family plot, at Shocktoe. She lost everything in the war. Her name was Elizabeth Van Lew.

Point being, it would be very good to try to keep Ladies Tea a positive forum, working to be inclusive of women's experiences during the war. Should there be an outside source not agreed with, a thread on the topic is the place to discuss this. Our membership, not to mention the many browsers who find their way here, have ancestors whose stories include these women.

Brass once encouraged how positive this posting has been over the years- compliment? Oi. It now feels more of a responsibility than ever.

It is for good cause that you have appropriated the image:smile:

One of my favourite aspects of the Civil War Museum in Harrisburg were the reenacted family videos. It became patently obvious by the end that everyone suffered as the war wound it's way through the South. The enslaved were freed, but it was at tremendous cost. Women and children were often silent victims easily forgotten.
 
In thinking about women's roles in the Civil War, I've been greatly influenced by remembering the statements of Professor Emily Clark of Tulane University, who studied the practice of plaçage in New Orleans culture, in which creole families of color contracted with white upper class men for their daughters. Except that, Dr. Clark read all of the contracts executed in New Orleans and there were no contracts for plaçage. I think we have to continue to look at what the roles of women really were in the Civil War, recognizing that they varied in different locations. A black woman slave in Texas might find herself burdened with even more tasks when the men, both white and black, had been summoned to the War elsewhere. In the Mississippi Valley, however, a black woman slave might feel that the chaos induced by the War and the loss of slaves who'd run away gave her greater leeway to negotiate with her mistress about how she was treated.

The experience of my great great grandmother's family in a community in West Virginia where the county she lived in was constantly changed throughout the War from Union to Confederate control and back again, would certainly have been different from other great great grandmother's in Arkansas, where women grew tired of those stragglers and bands of basically outlaws who preyed upon the locals. And different from those great great ancestresses in North Texas, where the fighting in the Western counties of Virginia was far from their fear of outlaw attacks and lynchings.

My interest in Ladies Tea is that we bring forward the stories of all kinds of women, as I find lots of difference between the generalized historical view of women in the Civil War and the histories that I read from women's letters and diaries. I read a statement recently about the nuns who supervised the floating hospitals on the Mississippi and how they chose the black women who'd formerly been slaves to work in their hospitals. They sought the ones who'd been midwives as they were more used to blood and would be seeing lots of it.

That's a kind of detail that I think gets lost in the usual "Women served as nurses in the hospital and battlefield" remarks by historians--which we can bring to light in Ladies Tea.
 
Last edited:
It is for good cause that you have appropriated the image:smile:

One of my favourite aspects of the Civil War Museum in Harrisburg were the reenacted family videos. It became patently obvious by the end that everyone suffered as the war wound it's way through the South. The enslaved were freed, but it was at tremendous cost. Women and children were often silent victims easily forgotten.


Phew, my patent attorney is on vacation! You'll laugh your knees off at this but living so close to that museum, I've never watched those! Like a ninnie. Will make a point of it. It's so odd and I know nothing about how ' Harrisburg ' interacts with the museum but there isn't a lot of publicity on such an amazing resource in our midst? Maybe there is and I've missed it- no expert here. I do know when my son's school had a trip there, and to Gettysburg planned, it was yanked last minute. These kids who grew up within sight of the first Anthracite mine in the US... toured a coal mine. Perhaps the intent was sterling but with that museum so close, what a lost chance for a school.

Yes, and again, no expert. 12 million African citizens swiped out of their shoes and shoved onto boats created a class of suffering, centuries long, we can't fathom. Between speculators and the Blockade and difficulty drawing attention to their fate soldier's wives starved. And women who once had everything buried belongings in the back yard and fled. Some set up homes in the woods. Huge percentages of them lost sons, husbands, fathers and brothers. Terrible stories of what a Southern woman's war entailed out of those years. To enable all of them to be told, seems important we just, plain listen to voices a century and half old.
 
In thinking about women's roles in the Civil War, I've been greatly influenced by remembering the statements of Professor Emily Clark of Tulane University, who studied the practice of plaçage in New Orleans culture, in which creole families of color contracted with white upper class men for their daughters. Except that, Dr. Clark read all of the contracts executed in New Orleans and there were no contracts for plaçage. I think we have to continue to look at what the roles of women really were in the Civil War, recognizing that they varied in different locations. A black woman slave in Texas might find herself burdened with even more tasks when the men, both white and black, had been summoned to the War elsewhere. In the Mississippi Valley, however, a black woman slave might feel that the chaos induced by the War and the loss of slaves who'd run away gave her greater leeway to negotiate with her mistress about how she was treated.

The experience of my great great grandmother's family in a community in West Virginia where the county she lived in was constantly changed throughout the War from Union to Confederate control and back again, would certainly have been different from other great great grandmother's in Arkansas, where women grew tired of those stragglers and bands of basically outlaws who preyed upon the locals. And different from those great great ancestresses in North Texas, where the fighting in the Western counties of Virginia was far from their fear of outlaw attacks and lynchings.

My interest in Ladies Tea is that we bring forward the stories of all kinds of women, as I find lots of difference between the generalized historical view of women in the Civil War and the histories that I read from women's letters and diaries. I read a statement recently about the nuns who supervised the floating hospitals on the Mississippi and how they chose the black women who'd formerly been slaves to work in their hospitals. They sought the ones who'd been midwives as they were more used to blood and would be seeing lots of it.

That's a kind of detail that I think gets lost in the usual "Women served as nurses in the hospital and battlefield" remarks by historians--which we can bring to light in Ladies Tea.


You have an incredible store of knowledge, 18th. Aspects on women in the war I previously just did not want to hear, you demolished, in the most graceful way, bringing forward women's experiences one by one or group by group. Smitten by history and our ancestors places in Time? Beyond smitten, and extremely grateful.

Rats, you just distracted me- now must go find the thread on our black nurses and the Sisters. It may be a thread on just one nurse, with the Sisters-black history-professional nurses in the war included- maybe 2 years ago?
 
There might have been a mention of one black nurse on a thread about nurses. We should probably put together a thread about the black women who were nurses on the hospital ships and the nuns who selected and trained them.
 
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