tv Lectures in History CSPAN December 26, 2015 8:00pm-9:17pm EST
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announcer: c-span takes you on the road to the white house and into the classroom. this year, our student documentary contest shows what issues students want to hear from the presidential candidates. get all of the details at c-span.org. this week on lecturers in history, boston university professor nina silber examine the lives of women in the civil war. she talks about the challenges that female slaves take -- face. she also talks about the reason
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that southern white women would or would not have supported a confederacy. her talk is about one hour and 15 minutes. prof. silber: we started talking about the beginning of the movement of women's right. saying,men, as i was were usually on the margins, i would say, of the women's writes movements. we talked about search on her truth, andjourner harriet jacobs also had contact with a number of women's writes activists,- rights but she was also very critical of white suffragists and often made the point that they did not fully recognize the way that race had created, you know, kind of a distinct set of obstacles for black women. i think somebody in our debate made exactly that point in our
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discussion. so we are to talk about that in a couple of weeks. about jacob to talk herself, the narrative she composed, and i think as you know, she wrote about narrative under the name of linda brent. also changed the name of a number of people in that account. she was born it not as linda in 1814, herjacob parents were slaves, but i also think you get a sense of this as she describes her childhood, her parents were skilled workers. they,meant that especially her father, had the opportunity to higher out their time and had the opportunity to live somewhat independently from the save -- from the slaveholders.
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a carpenter, and that meant that they could have the opportunity to have their children live with them. her brother john was referred to as william in the narrative and also residing close to them was harriet's maternal grandmother, her name was molly. what is she? i think she is and martha in the book. but her actual name was mauling -- aunt martha in the book. but her actual name is molly. she was freed during the revolution and she was re-enslaved when she was captured during this of a war, so she was one of those as we talked about where some opportunities opened up for slaves to get their freedom. she was captured, she was re-enslaved, and i think in the books, she was freed again when
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somebody bought her in the town and an freighter. -- and then freed her. harriet's experience is that she was living in a town or on a plantation, but most of the time she was living in a household and not on a plantation. i don't know how to make this a sharper image. i can try turning off the backlights. does that help a little bit? inthis is harriet jacob 1894, she is aged 81, i really tried to find a picture of her when she was younger but i could not seem to find one. she is a slave in north carolina, which had a somewhat different system from what existed in other parts of the south at this point. it was never a state that was dominated by large slave plantations. had this second middle passage, which was a point after the foreign slave trade has ended and when slaves are being
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shipped from the seaboard south to the interior and into the mississippi valley and into mississippi, louisiana, once you have that second little package -- passage, laser being taken to places like north carolina and being moved to the -- slaves are like north to places carolina and being moved to places like louisiana. in thet like places seaport south, there was a predominance of women, children, and the elderly in the slave community. the other thing i would save ut slavery inabo north carolina is that even though there were not large plantations, there were ways that slaveholders were trying to make system of slavery make dividends for them, even though, there was kind of a whole system of slavery moving westward.
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in north carolina, they were having slaves hire themselves out, they were letting slaves by their own freedom, so i think you're getting a sense of some flexibility, perhaps, for the slaves who lived around harriet jacob, at least compared to slaves living further to the west. so. further points out that she was aware she was a slave when she was six or's old, i think that was right after her mother died. i think she was 11 -- six euros -years-old, i think she was the hearing out right after her mother died. is james nor come -- norcom , and he looks sort of suitably devilish in this photo, as he should. was an older man
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and this is the house where harriet spent most of the time working in it in 10, north carolina -- edenton, north carolina. , she meets of the son partner, and she children. two these are believed to be pictures of harriet jacob's children. this is her daughter luisa at her son joseph. louisa, and her son, joseph.
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she had been reassigned at that point to the plantation, and at that point, she began her stay in the crawlspace of her grandmother's attic. the dimensions of the crawlspace feet wide,g, seven and about three feet wide at one -- nine feet long, seven feet wide, and about three feet wide at one end. iner she spent seven years the crawlspace, she then began a successful escape to the north. here then, is kind of an overview of harriet jacob's grandmother's house. it is a somewhat substantial house for this time. and then that is a kind of cut away of the crawlspace were harriet jacob would have stayed. this is i think harriet
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s split,ntioned norcom' and she is in the crawlspace at this point, but this is the comaway notice that nor placed. it is assigned by james norcom. it says north carolina, i think it says 1835 on that. when she got out of there, she became very active and abolition, she traveled around were activeomen who abolitionists, the encouraged her to write her story as a narrative. she finished writing it in 1858. it is not a novel, sometimes people call all of these kinds of books novels.
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she did not have a publisher until she met one of her white abolitionist friends. gave her an endorsement. "well,s this idea that, you write so well, how could you have written so well if you were a slave?" it was published then in 1851 on the eve of the civil war. it is one of the few, not the only, and not even the first, but one of the few slave narratives that was written by a woman. most of the ones of that we are familiar with that we have come across that are published are narratives that were written by male slaves, you know, they wrote about their confrontation with slave masters, you know, their quest for freedom and their kind of individual activity. like,ny of you read a, frederick douglass or any kind
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of slave narrative? i am seeing, like, one. we will talk about the difference between harriet jacobs and the other kinds of slave narratives. anybody have any initial thoughts about this book or comments? things that surprised you or stood out for you as you were reading this account? yes? >> [indiscernible] all the time she apologized for what she was doing, like, she had her children and she was kept trying to explain herself and i really didn't feel like -- prof. silber: you didn't really feel like it was necessary to go through all of that explaining? >> i thought it was strange that she would apologize to all of those people. prof. silber: anybody else have
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any thoughts on that as to why she keeps apologizing? yeah? one of the primary factors in the writing, in her book, is to appeal to white northerners, she will want to make sure that there aren't any loopholes or places where they can pick apart at her story and say, "well, why did you do that?" so she is taking great pains to explain everything. prof. silber: right, so i think a big part of it has to do with the audience that she writes for and how they are going to think of her if she doesn't make an apology. anything else that stood out for you if you read it? things that were surprising? of, youhat were kind know, unusual about how she describes her situation? you? >> i like how dr. flint -- imf. silber: you can call
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doctor fled, that's what we call him and he is known and hated as. >> yeah, i like how she described people were going and yelling at her. prof. silber: it is amazing that people did that, yeah, and that flint was afraid of her. people see her as an important person in the town, they liked her baking, and you are really write about that. one of the most interesting stories, i think, is when he says he is going to sell her and she says, "well, you know, i have always been promised i held get my freedom," and says, "well, i don't care what anybody says." and she goes to the slave auction and she gets up on the auction block and everyone says, "that's horrible, nobody should be selling you, and martha -- aunt martha!" is to anow her and it
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extent a power-play. yeah, that is an interesting part. yeah? >> [indiscernible] mistressesmidt -- how were [indiscernible] an harriet would wake up in the middle of the night and they were tapping on her or whispering, i wouldn't want to say sexual things, but things of that may be a slave master would tell her that she would respond to, like she was having an affair with the master. prof. silber: yeah, you are right, that relationship between mrs. flint and harriet is very interesting, and you feel like this is a very interesting, frustrated, angry woman. you feel like she has been cheated or she has been betrayed. she doesn't have any power to do anything against her husband, so
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the only person that she thinks she has power over is harriet jacobs. but yeah, it is very interesting. we sort of touched on this already, but the other point i want to pull out here is, from the standpoint of being a woman in slavery, what makes harriet jacobs's experiences distinctive? so how would you kind of -- what stands out as something that separates her from male slaves? ok, people have to have things that they want to say about this. >> i think her story is that she is constantly torn about wanting her own freedom and wanting to be a mother for her children. prof. silber: ok, so motherhood
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and the ties that she has her children are definitely an issue here. what else? what else stands out in her experiences specifically as a female slave? the slavesa lot of depended on religion for comfort, it was very important to them, and her religion was in that sheatened had the threat of being sexually abused by the master and then that would make her go back on her moral and religious principles and then she went and sands.ations with mr. prof. silber: mr. sands, right. so she is kind of trying to balance or deal with this issue, morality,idea of
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christianity that is with it and this constant threat that she is dealing with regarding constant sexual abuse and how she is going to deal with that. so she does kind of her for you to a couple of places, but she is very conscious that she has particular concerns that and as aher as a slave woman. she says on page 58, for example, this is the bottom of that first paragraph, she says, "the influence of slavery had the same effect on me that they had on other young girls. they made me ritually -- me prematurely knowing of the evil ways of the world. i knew what i did and i did it with deliberate calculations." givenntions that she had birth to her second child and she found that it was a girl and upn she said "when i found my second child was a girl, my heart was heavier than it ever had been before.
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slavery is particularly hard for women, and they have been wronged and suffer more vacations particularly difficult for their own." these are part of the distinctive wrongs and suffering of sexual abuse and there is the question of how to be a mother and the sort of constant fear as a mother that slave women have for their children, what is quite happen and how, inldren, fact, in a very specific way, how does motherhood complicate harriet jacobs's plan for escape? what is her plan for escape?
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does she just get on a boat right away and leave? no. what does she do? yeah. what did she do? ownn order to secure her freedom, she has to secure the freedom of her children first. she wants you make sure that her children can go up north with her, so she has to make sure that she has the ability to secure freedom for three people. prof. silber: yeah, she has to make sure that there is freedom for her children as well. but what did she do to try to manage that problem of her childrens' freedom as well? yeah? >> even if she is on the run, she tries to talk to them and understand to make sure that he will buy the children and freedom. prof. silber: right, so she is in negotiation with the childrens' father. wholees, i mean, the
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seven years in the crawl space is really about protecting her children. right? the seven years and the crawl space, she calls it her loophole. right? doesn't she call in her loophole of retreat or something like that? that128, the title of chapter, "the loophole of retreat." a femalehe dilemma as slave, she says it she is going to exploit a loophole right here. she is good to make it look like she is gone, when in fact she is not really gone. of completely taking herself out of the community, she is going to be in a place where she can watch, where she can sort of, you know, have some kind of supervision, even indirectly over her children, where she can hope she can intervene in their situation, so can you imagine a male slave
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what do men do? ,ow do they approach the whole a slave who was a man, what is their escape plan, basically? >> he did not feel any ties to where he was, -- >> absolutely. the only thing i would add to that, at least that's the way he would or trade it. -- portray it. he does not have time, he is not down by any commitments or relationships, and he will pursue a strategy on his own. one of the things that is so interesting about freighter douglass, frederick he makes it seem like he did the whole thing on his own. in fact, if you know more about
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frederick douglass, you would find out that he got help from his relatives, his fiancee. there is a way in which men who are slaves portray experience, they did it on their own, and women emphasize this relationship. let me get a little more specific. there are three themes that i think are very important in understanding. jacobs's slave narrative. the first theme is pretty much what we talked about, which is that her experience is unique because she writes as a slave in that sense she has certain kinds of experiences that are different from the kinds of experiences that men have. different experiences
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in slavery as a woman, in terms of the threat of sexual abuse, in terms of how to be a mother and protect her children, and she has unique circumstances in terms of how she is going to pursue her freedom. the second theme that i think is important comes up in terms of how she tells the story. when it comes to telling the story, i think she faces two choices, there is a combination of both, but there are two strategies that are sort of the predominant writing strategies of that time that she could pursue. one is, if you get right along the lines of a male slave narrative, something like frederick douglass wrote when he she coulde north, or write in the tradition of a sentimental novel. which we talked a little bit about, but we will come back to.
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the third thing i think is important here is that, stemming from this second one, one reason feels the need or is influenced by this model of the sentimental novel is because she is trying to appeal to a specific audience. erin, who is that specific audience she is trying to appeal to? >> white people in the north you may already have abolitionist it,encies, who want to stop or trying to create sympathy in people who are not addressing the issue at all. wax right, she -- foright, she is writing north abolitionists, vaguely anti-slavery, and further i think she is writing to northern white women.
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there are parts in the book where she says explicitly, this is you i am writing to, on page 58. this is right after the other quote that i read to you about have theseirls influences, can be destructive of her morals, but on page 58, she says, oh, you happy women, whose homes are protected by law, do not judge the poor, desolate slave girl too severely . this is a kind of direct appeal she is making to white women in the north. on page 60, she has again a part where she talks about this. and the middle of the page, she says, painting me or party me, you virtuous rater. you do not know what it is like
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to be a slave. she makes it clear that that is the audience she is interested in and appealing to. i will say even more, there is probably a kind of suspicion on her part that those northern , evenfemale readers are if she does not say this explicitly, are influenced by the idea we talked about, feminine difference. these are women who feel like virtue and goodness are especially important qualities for women to have and cultivate. she makes the point that women put a high premium on that, which is why i get back to the first point, she is apologizing so much. of pursuest to kind -- i think we talked quite a bit two, one, but in terms of
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the options she has in terms of how she will write about her experience, whether she will follow the male slave narrative, or whether she will follow the sentimental novel. if anybody has read anything else about slave narratives by this will fall on you, but maybe someone else has. for example, frederick douglass, how would you compare area jacobs' -- harriet accounts to those like frederick douglass? places muchhink she emphasis on the female aspect, for obvious reasons. there are a lot of things that stood out to me about what she had to say about white women as well. and the effect it had on them. she would not have had the same insight there.
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>> i have only read pieces of federal douglas's -- frederick think he makesi it more like an account. hers is more like a diary. he is is like, i did this, this, and that is how i got to this. kind of an emotional quality to it. there if you are member, is a key moment of frederick douglass's narrative. tryingent is when he is to have a fight with this guy who is trying to break him in and make him a more obedient slave. he fights with this guy and wins, he beats him up, and he says, this is a moment where i started to feel that i was a man and could attain my freedom. there are these kinds of moments , i think, in male slave narratives, and again, this puts the emphasis on doing it your self, struggling as an
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individual, these were important markers in the male slave narrative. and i think in a more general way, the whole movement about abolitionism emphasized freedom as kind of a male experience. in other words, the kind of relationship people understood and note you are free, a slave anymore, you are a man. they would not have said, once you are free and not a slave anymore, you are a woman. being a man was critical. for example, this is one of the chief symbols used in the abolitionist movement, and it was sort of this decal, i think it was made by wedgwood in england. it was a widely circulated image in the abolitionist movement. can you read what it says? >> am i not a man and a
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brother? >> right. this was a trope of the abolitionist movement. the just is, either you are a slave or you are a man, which makes it hard if you are a woman. it makes it hard to know how to write about your experience and write about achieving freedom. i think harry at jacobs is aware of this, but there are points in the course of her narrative where she makes reference to the this of trying -- juxtaposition of, if you are not a slave, you are going to be a man. partsu think of any
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-- you sort of present it as being a man. right, and this is sort of on the bottom, in reference to the experience of her uncle. and then she talks about herself, it was the very knowledge of my own shortcomings that urged me to retain, if possible -- actually, this part is about her brother -- to retain a spark of my brother's god-given nature. she wants to kind of take on those masculine qualities herself because that's what this list for freedom is about -- quest for freedom is about. the other part of .2 here, she is sort of torn between these story, presenting her one being the male slave narrative, and the other being the sentimental model. we talked briefly about the sentimental model, what have we said about it?
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not want to sexually abuse her anymore, so she took it out completely? >> she assumes this relationship with sands so she does not be bothered by flynn. >> it works like a double-edged sword. me, you happy, free women, so she made this choice to go with mr. sands, acause that would at least be way that i can control what happened to my children, she says, you know, "it sort of gave me a little measure of freedom to make that choice." and i think she also says, i think what she also said that this point, there is this point , in some ways, the
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quote i read to you before, "the real source of problem, the way -- the reason i didn't retain my source of effort you, the reason i went with sands is because of slavery." , itasn't that i was a woman wasn't because i didn't understand what was collect -- correct and not correct, it was problems with slavery. so she tries to make it clear that that is what corrupts a young girl's moral situation. she also, i think then, tries to redefine what it means to be free. she says at one point on page 59 when she makes her decision about taking mr. sands, she says, "it seems less degrading to give oneself than two submit submitulsion -- than to to compulsion. to --ys there is no way
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let's talk for a minute about this whole situation. do you think there was a choice that she had? would you call that a choice for harriet jacobs? >> i think it was a moment of relative choice more so then other situations in her life, but nothing was really good or free. toughad to make a decision. prof. silber: so it was not a wide-open choice there? >> yeah. >> i think choice kind of implies that she is free, so i don't think that is a choice at all. prof. silber: right. >> that is not a choice of freedom. she was not free when she made that choice. prof. silber: right. so the decision that she made
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was sort of saved by the fact that she was a slave, in other words. id here is this thing that read later which i thought was so interesting. this is another story that i was reading about harriet jacobs's's situation and it gave me some very interesting insight about this. norcom's threats and notified dr.tress sands to her sexual availability . he began at this point with courting her with letters and said that the and she was caught between two older stockers and she gave into the younger evil. so in other words, this analysis , which she doesn't explain about it this way in the book, here is sands, or sawyer, who knows about harriet, and he is actually the son of flint's partner, and he knows very well
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what is going on between flint and a harriet, and he knows that harriet is trying to get away from flint, and so she says, " -- he says, "hey, i am going to take this opportunity." he is playing this opportunity for well knowing that the kind of distress of that harriet is under. the time it is over, who do you think is a nice guy? gives the children their freedom, that is, until he is badgered to death about it. i think we go to that point, how much choice is therefore harriet jacob at this point? ok. ,o at the very end of the book just to kind of conclude this point of these different genres att harriet jacobs writes, the very end, she confronts outright the fact that she is
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not writing a sentimental novel. your member what she says at the very end? -- you remember what she says at the very end? [sneezes] prof. silber: bless you. bless us all. [laughter] prof. silber: exactly. says she obtain freedom and not in the usual way with marriage, but being free instead. prof. silber: exactly, my freedom ends not in the usual way, with marriage, which would be the sentimental novel. i am the virtuous heroine and i go through all of these ordeals, and at the end, she finds the
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managing luz, and she says, i am not going to end this way, the book doesn't and this way. but it ends, and she says, maybe it ends in a more important way? it ends in freedom and not with marriage. ok. so i am going to throw one other point here and maybe will -- w'' ll have time for something else. there are other interpretations i have read where people say, in fact, harriet jacobs was not successfully able to resist the threats and sexual abuse of dr. flint and that he did in fact rape her and that sense of propriety compels her to tell the story in a different kind of way. what do you think about the -- that? like did you read this book and think, "oh yeah, i am sure he
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did it?" >> it seems really unrealistic to me that he would go through like, all through the notes and that mrs. flint would be so upset about it, if it never physically escalated to that point. only thing i could think of is that he was so afraid of the grandmother that it seems like he probably did. prof. silber: yeah. because it she was so apologetic through it, i could understand where she is coming from because she has all this pressure and especially because she wants to appeal to northern white women it where she doesn't want to make it seem like she -- it looks bad on her, almost. prof. silber: right, in other words, it is totally plausible that it could happen, but you could see what she has to present it differently? yeah. yeah.
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i suppose another way of saying this is, given what she it feels like a pretty escalated version of sexual abuse no matter what we call it. stairs,s her down the there is all the kind of, in a sense, the physical abuse that she endures, almost, it is a gray area of what we would actually call it. ok. on tooing to move something else and we are going to sort of switch gears here and talk about the coming of the civil war, as i mentioned, you know, harriet jacobs's novel is published right on the eve of the civil war in 1851. so i feel that kind of chronologically it makes sense to move on to that topic. at the time of the civil war, i
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would say that most people knew that slavery, without question, had something to do that was causing the civil war, and people knew that the war was linked to the struggle for abolition. in fact, the story was often told that sometime in 1853 in the middle of the civil war, abraham lincoln, who was then the president, met this famous woman writer, harriet teacher stowe,arriet beacher and she wrote this book, "uncle and apparently they had a meeting where he met her and he said quote the little lady who wrote this book that -- hed this great big war , "the little lady who
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wrote this book that started this great big war." lincoln actually said this, i think there is a reason that lincoln might have said it. because when you put things like this, here is the lady that wrote the book that started this big war, it implies that the cause-- that the union had the standing and moral credibility because here was a woman like harriet beecher stowe who kind of put her stamp on it. if we can refer back to this woman's concern, then it gives our cause moral credibility. lincoln of course was now pursuing a policy of emancipation to end slavery. he himself was trying to put the war on a higher moral foundation, so it makes sense that he would, in some way, draw on the endorsements of somebody like harriet beecher stowe.
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now in the south, white southerners did something theyar, although obviously were not putting the same emphasis on emancipation. they portrayed southern white women as a source of moral inspiration for their cause, for the confederacy, and they even made the argument that they were fighting for the war in the first place to protect her women. obviously -- protect their women, obviously in this case, white women. contrast between north and south and the way they thought about women and the way they thought about gender. and here is where i think the important difference is. confederates, more than union supporters, tended to downplay women's direct involvement in the war. important, yes they were a part of our moral
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foundation, but in terms of direct artistic patient in the war, they said, no. they had a small, totally unimportant role for women. and i think it came from a tradition and the south of seeing women protected, of being , even if theyr didn't do all of these things, they liked to believe that they did all of these things, and we talked about putting women on a pedestal. i think that sort of comes across here. as a result, it meant that women, white women, who lived in the confederacy were much more limited and constrained in terms of what kind of involvement and participation they could have in the war effort. in point here, although not really historically accurate, would be "gone with the wind." does anybody know "gone with the wind?" read -- probably
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watched the movie, nobody has read the book. you might have seen the movie, it is for and a half hours. does anyone remember the heroine? yes, it is scarlet o'hara. one of the central tensions of her story in this book that she is constantly confronting are the kind of limits that southern society puts on women. she can't run a business, she actually wants to have more no,ality, society says, no, no, women don't do this sort of thing. she goes to a fund-raising fair and all she can do really is kind of sit behind the table at the fair. we can't allow women to do , evenng more than that though she is a widow.
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i want to compare and talk about some of the ways that women figured into the war effort and also the way that causes were being defined in both the north and in the south. how both sides were putting women into the picture when they talked about the reasons that they were fighting, but then they also talked about, you know, the things or the way that women did things in the course of the war. right. so here's the first point that i want to make. to understand the role and the of southernin terms women and northern women in the war, we have to go back and connect that to a thing that we have been talking about already for the past few weeks in terms spheresr the separate in the north or that other thing in the south, does anybody remember what i called it? sphere?ivic
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prof. silber: the civic sphere was of the third sphere, but we talked about the patriarchal households of the south. so we have these two different ways of thinking about gender roles in the north and the south. the basicnderstanding division of war between the north and the south is very much connected to understanding something about gender. know, we have had all kinds of debates and discussions and war was caused by slavery and war was caused by constitutional principles, and my point is not, i don't really care about that or it is not about slavery, but my point is, we can't really understand the different ways that the two sides conceived of their causes and formulated their differences without understanding gender. but let me get more specific about what i mean. in the south, i believe that southern white men went to war, yes they went to war for
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slavery, but another way to talk about this is that they went to -- i have so little blackboard space -- they went to for something we should call mastery. what i mean by that is that they went to war to fight for ,heir right to be independent land-holding men who controlled and ran their own households as they saw fit. i will say that again. they fought for the right to be independent, land-holding men who controlled and ran their own households as they saw fit. for many of them, this meant the right to control, by, sell -- b slaves, andir black
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for many of them, it it meant for them to one day themselves be owners of black slaves, but in a more general sense, it meant the power over their own household. andun their own household to reject the idea that a government could kind of come in and mess with your household. right? that a government has the right to kind of intervene in any way in what happens in your home. language -- iis mean, this mentality, was reflected in the language that southern white men used when they went to war. ,ecause what they talked about if you listen to the things that some soldiers wrote about or even some politicians wrote about, some of these were very orter of fact principles some kind of abstract idea, but they wrote about preserving and protecting their homes. a soldier from virginia, for
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example, said quote, "the man who loves his family the best now is he who is most anxious and who will risk the most and suffer the most to repel the invader." another soldier said it this way, "dear is my country to the dearer to me by far is my little woman." so your family, your home, you're kind of domestic space, this household. of domestic space, it this household -- this household. the home had to be protected. but i think something else is going on in this language. they fight to retain this position of the protectors and the patriarchs of the household. and they were fighting to retain
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a position because that was the source of all of their power and their wealth. it was a place to kind of, you know, encapsulate all of their worldly assets. we are fighting for matters real and tangible, said one soldier from texas, our property and our home. in other words, really to a great extent, we are not mixing this up with, we want a nation, we want a country, they are very much talking about home and family. wordsese might seem like that menus a lot when they go to war, and yes, that is true. these are things that men often -- that they go to war men use a lot when they go to war, and yes, that is true. these are things that men often say when they go to war. did nothe north, men
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repeatedly reference a home, but they tended to put a nation above the home. they tended to say that the most important thing we are fighting for is not home, family, etc., etc., but this national ideal. so one soldier said, for example, to his wife, "my duties to my country are of more important now than my duties to you." thank you, buddy, yeah. [laughter] prof. silber: another one wrote, "duty promise me to go, my home is first, and my friends are next." we got priorities of the most important thing now is the nation. now geographically speaking in terms of how the war was fought, that would make sense. these are men who were not staying in place and protecting many home as mighty -- as southerners might have. these were men who were going off, and it was far off.
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they put a lot of emphasis on that idea of the country. but again, there was something else going on here. i think it was easier for union soldiers to be prioritized, is that a word? homeless priority to their because it wasn't their domain. not in the way that it was for confederate soldiers. so again, we had that whole very complicated diagram about separate spheres. in the north, right, we have home and work and in the south we have the one big sphere and a kind of plantation household with a home sphere in the middle. , you know, words following this notion that the distinct, kind of separate sphere, where women were more or less in charge, it thought it was a
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secondary consideration, northern men would have said that. did not men initially have all of their wealth and property concentrated in their home in the same way that southern men did. right? because we know that northern men increasingly were looking outside of the home to factories, to businesses, to the marketplace, as a source of wealth. it meant that it was easier for northern meant to say, the most important thing is country, the less important thing is the home. or as one union soldier put it as he went off to fight, "first my god, second my country, third my mother." again, really? all right, so if you are in the south, it would have been inconceivable to rank your mother so low. that was not the language of that southern men used when they
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went off to war. one southerner went and wrote, quote, "women had is enough to and strong men into tears to shout and i verily believe that the ranks of the went intoy that they war solely for her that they fought." there are two different conceptions of that women are central and home is important and there are two different ways of talking about the cause and it had different effects on women. the women who heard these conceptions, the women who had to live through this and deal with these ideas, these ideas that were being put forth by men . , let's take a little -- let's put on our imagination cap's for a moment here, and for ae that -- caps here moment and imagine that you are
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during thethe south civil war and that you hear the things that i just said. the breaks of the confederacy went rolling into battle on the misty conviction were solely for her that they fought. you hear about this momentous struggle. so what do you feel? what is it going to make you want to do? to back the want confederacy and preserve this way of life? prof. silber: ok, so it is definitely a way that is drawing you into the concerns of the confederacy. you want to support the confederacy. you want to support the confederacy because they are supporting you. it definitely gives you that sense of attachment. >> it makes you want to get
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involved in whatever war efforts that women would get involved with at the time, because i know put women really could only their political opinions in negative ways and would do its inner boycotts, but >> ok. they feel the cause is important. they feel important to the cause. how do we contribute? anything else? >> it allowed women to expand, get involved in the war effort, and especially nursing in war hospitals. they had to leave their home and be active in the community. >> we don't know how that will
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but you're right. women, there is a sense of their origins to the cause and the strictly -- struggle the confederacy is waging . this is an illustration. it says, "southern women hounding their men on the rebellion." who are really the instigators here promoting these women? the men here don't look happy about it. be ones who seem to promoting the conflict are women. they start writing inspirational
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poetry to inspire men to go to war. they will find ways to encourage men so they can make the sacrifice for the confederacy, but they also feel frustrated. they feel a sense of frustration. what they face is this problem as to what they can do in this war. they can write poems, right letters.- write they are told that "only women can make the confederate soldier
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a gentleman of honor." how'd you do that? that is a lofty goal, almost passive. how do you play an active part in the role? a lot of southern white women expressed frustration, very predominate note of frustration. yes, we want to be active and involved, but we don't know what outlets there are for us to do that. if only i could be of some use to our poor, stricken country. would go onnd women to say, i wish i were a man. this is a constant refrain that many southern women wrote. if i was a man, it would be clear what i needed to do. men had clear responsibilities in wartime. for women, it is much less clear.
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so for a few women, the desire unlike man -- again, not the american revolution, but perhaps more so during the civil war -- translated into doing the work that men did, to become soldiers. arethe official figures about 400 women in both the north and south disguised themselves as men. they had initially accompanied their husbands or signed up to the nurses, and they took the joinof the man when they the ranks in battle. people believe many more than 400. known cases, because only 400 were discovered. example, here is loretta
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vasquez. i k is she skies herself as a man and join the confederate army. a few southern white women. herself as ased man and joined the confederate army. hide theirt have to sex when they became a spy. they could use their sex because they could cross the border and carry messages, weapons, contraband. a sense of decency, men would just assume that they were women in search of husbands or mothers in search of their
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sons, that it would be inappropriate to subject these and so theyrches, could win the sympathies of men on the opposing side. they assumed these were women and could not be involved in the literary intrigue. one of the most famous of these was rose green how how. she was famous for holding social to have the rings entertain union politicians, entertaining and socializing men and the lincoln administration. chatting at the parties, she got important to military information, and she got a lot of-- she
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information about bull run -- she passed the information to confederate oteri officials and helped them to win that first key battle. eenhow did did not hide the fact that she was a woman. she had a party and chatted up with her guest. no suspicions were aroused by that, that she was getting military information. other southern women joined ladies aid societies, made supplies or the troops, a few game nervous is, tended to the tendedw became nurses, to the wounded in their home. many southern white women felt constrained about acting boldly
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because the eyed deals of the south emphasized that women were weak, subordinate, needed to be part acted, and it wasn't horton to be genteel -- it was important to be genteel and ladylike. to act like a lady was a critical constraint that many southern white women felt. woment, southern white found if they were to bold, too aggressive, to outspoken, they could be ridiculed and humiliated. they did not like that. theire to illustrate -- in aeen a conflict conflict between the women of general in and that
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charge of occupied new orleans, benjamin butler. two, union troops invaded new orleans, occupied the city, and were able to bring it under the control of the union army, and the union general was benjamin butler. from the start of the documentation, butler had the problem with local women in new orleans. the ladies of new orleans did not like having union soldiers in admits, so they would make -- dst.heir mi they would make faces at them. ofthey sold them on one side the street, they would cross over to the other side. one woman dumped her chamber pot on the head of a navy admiral. enough ofutler said
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that and issue the "woman order." can i get somebody to read the woman order? female shall, by word, chester, or movement, insult or show contempt for any officer or soldiers of the -- shall bes, she regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the town avocation. be a, what does it mean to woman of the town plying her avocation? it an intimation of
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prostitution. >> yes, it means she is acting like a prostitute, if this is what she does. in other words, the implication here was that women who made a spec the coal of themselves in , or demonstrated against the soldiers, were no better than prostitutes. benjamin butler is the union ok, women saying, right letters, stay home, so uniforms, but they went beyond what is acceptable for refined women to do. he is saying how the sevens go on and on about how refined southern ladies are. this is not refined.
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this is not ladylike. southerne idea of women as ladies is a myth is what he is saying. it is true that most women in new orleans did not want to face the humiliation associated with benjamin butler's women's order. they stop spinning, dumping spmber pots, -- itting, dumping chamber pots -- because of southern women wanted to be refined later's, butler was asked posing that they had strayed from that idea. that he was going to that idealdea, they wanted to live by, and
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control their outbursts. here was a cartoon that ran in some magazine in the north right after benjamin butler's women's order was introduced and onlemented, so you can see this side the ladies of new orleans before general butler's is quite an -- that spit. that is a bull's-eye spit. and here they are after general proclamation.ximatio the idea that they are nasty,'s spitting prostitute before, and now we have brought them under control. was a kind ofr disturbing reminder -- i'm not
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applauding general butler -- a disturbing reminder that even about what isines proper for women being to do were being cross during a time of war that women would not move out of positions of subordination completely. feltneed that many women to be refined ladies also influence whether southern women resided to become nurses. in fact, many southern white women did not become nurses. they dislike the idea of being nurses, the idea that there might the untoward, unsavory contact the between themselves and lower-class men who were soldiers in the army. they believe as one woman put it tot it would be "injurious the delicacy and refinement of a lady to be a nurse and a hospital. "
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maybe sometimes if i wounded soldier was near our home, an emergency, and if our husband was wounded, certainly we would help him out. but few southern women made it an occupation, especially when it meant taking care of strange n. they believe that kind of work of was the work slave women did. fact, the confederacy found it hard to get white women to commit to nursing, and throughout the war they suffered a mysterious shortage of female nurses. the inn of my time, so we will talk more about this -- i think i am out of my time, so we will talk more about this theme. i will send you an e-mail about
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the paper submission and see you on thursday. as we join students and college classrooms to hear lectures on topics ranging from the american revolution to 9/11, lectures in history are also available as podcasts. visit our website c-span.org/history/podcast or download them from itunes. tylerday night on q&a, able, stepson of the late: this, ,alks -- the late columnist talks about the diaries that give an insider take on washington dc from 1960-96 he nine. 1969. >> it was remarkable all the things he did. sometimes held
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