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U Section of the San Bernardino SUN April 1, 2007 
Confederate Heroines By Thomas P. Lowry Louisiana State University Press, 2006 
Southern Women as Clandestine Confederate Warriors
It is not fitting to let March go by without acknowledging the International Month of Women's History with at least one book review of a book on a related topic. Although it may seem that I did indeed let March slip away because the Gregorian calendar says it is April 1st, really -according to the Julian calendar - it is still March. Since Women's Studies became a discipline in which one can receive a university degree, we have discovered the many unacknowledged contributions women have made to the development of our civilization. There is real proof that the saying "behind every man, there is a great woman" is very accurate. Even in the traditional context of our society, men - corporate tycoons to blue color workers - build their careers and accomplishments on the backs of the women who enable them to succeed by running their offices and their households and raising the children. Aristophanes' "Lysistrada" aside, the vast field of women's roles in war and in bringing about peace, remains unexplored. "Confederate Heroines" by Thomas P. Lowry is about Southern women who were involved in clandestine activities against the Union Army and were convicted by Union military commissions. It is not a book about why so many Confederate women supported the Confederacy. Rather it is about how these women were perceived by the Union powers. The research about Southern women during the Civil War is scant. "The antebellum societies of the Union and the future Confederacy were very different," Lowery writes. "The nascent wave of female political and economic power in the North was far advanced in comparison with that of the South…. Evidence suggests that elite women (of the South) were kept under, not atop, a pedestal. They were given everything - and nothing." Southern women, set adrift in the chaos and destruction of the Civil War were forced to devise new ways to cope and survive. Most women who took part in activities to thwart and even sabotage the Union Army did not base their actions on well thought out moral convictions. Many simply found themselves protecting life itself while thrown in a situation not of their choosing or making. Even if they did not support the Confederate cause, they could have hardly abandoned their homes, families and life's histories in order to defect to the Union. Others supported the Rebel Cause because they had sons, husbands, fathers and brothers fighting in the Confederate Army. Yet others simply wanted to protect the little that was left of their way of life - not slavery per se, but the cocoon of familiarity and the sense of continuity and belonging. Whatever their reasons, it took enormous courage to act clandestinely against the Union Army. "Confederate Heroines" focuses on the little known stories of Southern women working against the Union in the borderline states of Missouri, Maryland and Tennessee. Some nursed Confederate soldiers and smuggled to them behind enemy lines letters, medicines and even arms. Others smuggled important documents and strategically important information about the Union Army. Many were involved in espionage and sabotage. In 1861, Union general Henry Halleck issued an order that anyone involved in destroying railroads and in cutting telegraph wires would be sentenced to death. Such was the case of eighteen-year old, illiterate, epileptic and mentally unstable Sarah Jane Smith who was caught cutting telegraph wires and poles twice. The second time she was caught, she was sentenced to death. But her sentence was commuted to imprisonment until the end of the war on the bases of the testimony of two doctors. Sarah Jane is just one of the 120 Southern women who were convicted by military courts of the Union. Were these women heroines? In as much as it took courage and selflessness to participate in activities that ultimately led to imprisonment or even death, they definitely were heroines even from Union perspective. Ophelia Georgiev Roop Library Director San Bernardino Public Library |
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