Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War

Drawing on letters, diaries, and poetry from Southern women belonging to the elite class of slaveholders, Faust attempts to examine how these women were transformed during the Civil War. At the onset of war dainty ladies were happy to send the menfolk off to battle, little expecting four long years of war and personal hardship. As the war raged on, elite southern women were forced to take up the slack of their missing husbands, sons, and brothers. Women came to know a different social order, one without their husbands and sons, and for single ladies, an entire life without men. Faust pens the biography of high society Southern women during the Civil War years to give historians and readers an idea of the transformations their lives went through in just over four years.
 Anyone searching for understanding of what women in the slaveholding class of the South during the American Civil War experienced would find use of this book. While interesting, Mothers of Invention leaves the reader feeling that something important was missed in Faust’s portrait of Southern slaveholding women. As president of Harvard University, Gilpin Faust’s other books specializing in the Civil War South include James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery and The Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South.1
 With men running off to fight, women wanted to feel useful and needed something to keep them busy. Faust points to the desire of many women to find productive use of their time. In a precursor to the Reconstruction years and memorializing Civil War soldiers and Southern history, most elite women felt that they could contribute to the war effort in some way. According to many, teaching was a natural fit. The Augusta Daily Constitutionalist boldly proclaimed that “Women are peculiarly fitted, naturally and morally, for teachers of the young.” Faust argues pressingly that the advent of female teachers spurred a movement for the reform and upgrading of women’s education. Although there were educated women in Southern aristocracy, it was noted that the education of women was not substantial enough, particularly if they were to educate men.2

In general, women’s entire lives were turned upside down when their men left to defend the South. From managing plantations and droves of slaves, to adjusting to life across the board without their partners, women at first looked at the change in their lives as badges of honor. With capital and investments to sustain upper-class families, Faust contends that the effects of the mass exodus of so many men was delayed and less direct.3 However, as the Civil War would eventually come to an end women were beyond ready for their men to return home. Faust notes from the diaries and letters of many Southern women the entreaties for the men to return. A Texan wrote her husband, “The truth is . . . you must come home.”4
Mothers of Invention fails to mention another group of “Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War.”: the slave women themselves. Living right alongside white women during the Civil War were female slaves. The experiences of these slave women during this period would have changed greatly, just as significantly as those of the slaveholding women. Surely their ‘inventiveness’ would have been just as great as white women of the ruling class. Without the capital and investment Faust notes of white women, slave women and newly emancipated women would have faced even greater challenges. The mention of Lizzie Neblett and her repurchase of her own clothing from a slave does not begin to shed light on the changing lives of slave women.5

David W. Blight’s Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory provides readers with three leading memories of the Civil War. Significantly for Mothers of Invention is the reconciliationist vision that extolled the dedication of Union and Confederate soldiers without entertaining discourse on the causes and motives of the Civil War, largely promoted by women. With their self-aggrandizement during The War, women felt they could also contribute something after the Civil War. Women felt they had suffered right alongside their men, and knew acutely the heroism and bravery of their men. Women, especially the female group, United Daughters of the Confederacy, were adept at raising money to memorialize the men who had fought in the Civil War. Blight posits that the United Daughters of the Confederacy even tried to control historical interpretation of the Civil War by managing student textbooks. 6 “As guardians of piety, education, and culture,” women channelled their war experiences into Reconstruction activism.7
A transformation signifies something that was, but has now been changed. Mothers of Invention does not look back at the women and the Civil War years after time had passed. Did the feelings and experiences these women experience carry on throughout the years of reconstruction? What were the significant aspects of transformation after the war in their relationships with men? Did the women bring back their beloved fashions? Faust alludes to soldiers experiencing post-traumatic stress but for all the reader knows it was business as usual for the Southern women after the men returned. Reflections along this vein would have allowed the reader to make a better conclusion on the effect of the American Civil War on women of the upperclass South. 

1 Harvard University. “Catherine Drew Gilpin Faust.” accessed June 9, 2014, http://www.harvard.edu/ president/biography.
2 Faust, Mothers of Invention, 83-84. 
3 Ibid., 32.4 Ibid., 241.
5 Ibid., 222.6 Blight, Race and Reunion, 273. 
7 Ibid., 273.