Date

8-25-2022

Department

College of Arts and Sciences

Degree

Master of Arts in History - Thesis (MA)

Chair

Mary Ogden

Keywords

Civil War, southern women, slavery, independence, freedom, Confederacy

Disciplines

History

Abstract

This study explores the complex relationship between southern women and their ideas of independence and freedom during the Civil War years. In addition, this study seeks to investigate how southern women’s attitudes regarding slavery changed from 1861-1865. With their husbands, brothers, and fathers serving in the war, southern women were forced to become the sole white authority figures on their estates. This reality shift made them come to understand just how dependent their independence was on slavery. Southern women believed that independence could only come to the Confederacy, and it was inconceivable to have a simultaneous future where the Confederacy won and the slaves gained their freedom. The women who entered the war in 1861 with assumptions about slavery did not, and could not, view the institution through the same lens by the war’s end in 1865. Slavery had been legally eradicated by the 13th Amendment at the end of 1865, but it remained to be seen how the important new change would be treated in the states, especially the ones from the late Confederacy where southern women held significant influence.

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