Location
Stephen F Austin State University, Baker Pattillo Student Center, Twilight and Grand Ballrooms
Start Date
22-4-2010 4:00 PM
End Date
22-4-2010 8:00 PM
Description
Love remains one of the most basic human emotions that provides the motivation and sustains the loyalty of familial bonds. People fight for country and cause due to love and loyalty to those at home. Southern fami-lies involved in the American Civil War were no different. Fathers, husbands, sons, mothers, wives, and daugh-ters loved while in the midst of the “cruel war,” surrounded by death, destruction, and desperation. These same motivations remain in our society and an examination of correspondence between the homefront and the bat-tlefront sheds light into the inner workings of daily life as well as assigned gender roles.
This study examines the correspondence of families caught in the middle of a war. None were particularly famous or well known in their time, but they made up the upper-middle to upper class of antebellum society. These individuals lived according to socially adopted gender roles and tended to accept them for what they were. This research shows how these families adapted social norms in order to survive the struggles brought by the war.
Included in
Cultural History Commons, History of Gender Commons, Social History Commons, United States History Commons, Women's History Commons
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The American Civil War in the South: Love, Letters, and Shifting Gender Roles
Stephen F Austin State University, Baker Pattillo Student Center, Twilight and Grand Ballrooms
Love remains one of the most basic human emotions that provides the motivation and sustains the loyalty of familial bonds. People fight for country and cause due to love and loyalty to those at home. Southern fami-lies involved in the American Civil War were no different. Fathers, husbands, sons, mothers, wives, and daugh-ters loved while in the midst of the “cruel war,” surrounded by death, destruction, and desperation. These same motivations remain in our society and an examination of correspondence between the homefront and the bat-tlefront sheds light into the inner workings of daily life as well as assigned gender roles.
This study examines the correspondence of families caught in the middle of a war. None were particularly famous or well known in their time, but they made up the upper-middle to upper class of antebellum society. These individuals lived according to socially adopted gender roles and tended to accept them for what they were. This research shows how these families adapted social norms in order to survive the struggles brought by the war.
