471A3--Week 4 Questions/Comments--Tuesday

Reading
I enjoyed Janney’s book as it highlights the importance of the Ladies Memorial Associations in the years immediately following the Civil War. My issue with her work is that it overemphasizes the LMAs as being at the forefront of the Lost Cause because of their work to provide proper burial of Confederate dead. I thought that was a bit of an exaggeration and her case is weakly supported. She aptly highlights the makeup of the associations as being middle to upper class women of which many don’t have a direct military connection to the Civil War. The reason for this could be that women of means were necessary to provide and solicit for funds to support their work. Perhaps widows and Confederate veterans’ wives were not interested in extending the conflict past Appomattox. Aside from the makeup of the association, Janney doesn’t sell me on the Lost Cause angle simply because the women were attempting to recover and inter and reinter ex-Confederate dead. Janney herself states that “…the LMAS’ primary objective was to honor the sacrifices and lives of those Confederate men who had fallen in battle.” (p. 8) Janney goes on to try to explain that the Confederate women in Virginia were staunchly loyal to the Confederate cause, even in defeat; “…women mobilized to redirect their energies and unrelenting Confederate nationalism into memorial societies.” (p. 30) This is a pretty loaded statement that she fails to support. I would agree that the women of Virginia were more loyal to the Confederate cause than women in other states, simply because of the battle locations, but to say that their “unrelenting Confederate nationalism” pushed them to create memorial societies seems a bit overblown. Why can’t it be that they were merely the voice of the South that was pretty ticked off that their dead were being ignored while the Federal government was painstakingly cataloguing, recovering, and burying Union dead? There is however a case to be made that the speeches given at Memorial Day events were certainly the beginnings of the Lost Cause ideological movement, but men were giving these speeches, and I believe Janney overstates how much control the women had over these speeches. -Jason

Janney discusses the relationship between men and the LMAs in virtually every chapter we've read thus far. I think that it is an important aspect of the story of the Lost Cause to look at because Janney is arguing that women were at the forefront of Confederate memorialization and how the Lost Cause would never have reached the scale that it did without Southern "Ladies'" devotion to the Confederacy. However, her supporting evidence, in my opinion, weakened her argument. With the exception of the Petersburg LMA, Janney gave me the impression that women's organizations were basically the mouthpiece for ex-Confederates and southern men. I don't mean to de-glorify (that isn't even a word) the women's efforts because they did play a pivotal role in carrying out memorial days, burying soldiers, and setting up memorials and shrines, but I do get the impression that without the help of men and men's organizations, LMAs would not have been as successful as Janney is making them out to be. --Carly W.

Janney’s argument definitely challenges my perspective on women’s post-wartime roles. I align more with Drew Gilpin Faust’s position. I see more southern women try to return to their antebellum roles than those who jump into the public sphere. She is, I’ll admit, looking only at those women who joined the LMAs, though. I think Janney does support her claims, though. I’ve read so many diaries and letters where young women talk about how they resisted Union occupation and did everything they could to offer something to the Confederate cause. I can totally see why these women would have a difficult time after the war “surrendering their service and devotion” (42). Not only that, they were needed during the war. They played an integral part in supplying and motivating the Confederate men. I also think that status had a lot to do with women’s post-war roles. As Janney points to on page 55, “membership in the Ladies served as a marker of class status.” My question would be, though, if these women were “overwhelmingly the wives and daughters of the cities’ businessmen and civic leaders,” how many slaves would they have owned? Or are my assumptions just a consequence of watching and knowing about Gone with the Wind? I also think it’s important to note that Janney is also emphasizing the autonomy women demanded when working with men. Yes, they received the help of men’s organizations and support, but they certainly didn’t want the men taking all the glory for something they started. -- Brooke

The funeral process really stuck with me during the reading. I knew that the Civil War dealt with a lot of death but reading what these women were dealing with and reading how “Instead of parties we have been almost every week to a funeral,” (p. 31) I thought that it showed a different side to the women rather that what we had read previously about them participating in Decoration Days and Memorial Day. –Kayle P.

The quote on p. 106 (“The New York Tribune admitted that Lee ‘ was not absolutely without honor and even affection in the North,’ and the New York World remarked that his death brought ‘a chord of profound and sincere regret in the hearts of Americans of all sections and of the most diverse public opinions.”) was something that I never thought of. I never imagined that the North could possibly mourn people that had fought for the South. I thought that it was intriguing idea that even though they had fought against one another that there still could possibly still be some level of respect. –Kayle P

I enjoyed reading Janney's book, I had to re-evaluate my thoughts on women's involvement in the Civil War period, both during the war and after the war. I did not realize that women had such a huge role in the memory of the Civil War. But I don't know if I agree with Jason in that her argument is weak or if I think that she is just repetitive. I wonder if she was trying to create different angles to look at the women or if she was just limited in the sources she had available...-Meg O

I have to agree with Brooke and say that I also lean more towards Faust’s view of women’s roles in the post-wartime period and although Janney focuses on a small demographic of women her work seems well researched. Up to this point most of the scholarly works I have read regarding women after the war haven’t focused on specific women’s groups which I found interesting. I was also surprised how politically charged the LMA’s were, “The ladies shrewdly manipulated the political conditions of Reconstruction and the New South to maintain widespread southern support and broadened their public role by serving as surrogate government agencies for the defeated Confederacy” (7). These groups of women essentially forced their way into the political scene and established political relationships with men and the government which was unlike their pre-war roles in the South. --Mary O.

Similarly, in this vein from Mary and Brooke, Janney makes a pretty big claim that the gender divisions during Lost Cause movements "substantially alter[ed] the very nature of public male-female relationships in the South" (80). Do you agree with her? How well does she support her claims? - Carly B.

I find it interesting that the LMAS’ membership characteristics showed a continued patriotic devotion to the Confederacy. Janney makes two points to confirm this: 1, many of the LMAS’ male relatives did not serve the Confederate military, and 2 if they did, they did not really lose loved ones. 56-57. This was a way for women to step up in politics, proving their commitment to the cause. I like how she uses the term “cross-fertilization” to describe the way the ladies interacted with other southern women. – Ana Y.

The most interesting part to me was the importance of the wartime organizations in the development of post-war women's memorial groups. Janney points to church-based sewing groups, nursing networks, funding organizations for uniforms and supplies, and wartime civic organizations of women who really led the post-war memorial associations. This shows how the war mobilization of women in civic life may have permanently mobilized women during of time when women were supposed to be apolitical. -Matt

I found the immediacy aspect of commemoration to be intriguing. Janney makes the argument that because women (and not ex-Confederate soldiers) were at the front in leading commemorations, the southern whites hoped that the North would ignore the political aspect (6). - Carly B.

I thought it was interesting how Janney depicts southern white women's belief in the need to memorialize the Confederate fallen. It seems that these women saw their activities as vitally important, due to the fact they some fought with certain veteran groups over Civil War memory. Their fervent actions to preserve their idealized and romanticized memory of their Confederate men shows these women were apart of the same mentality that wanted to separate truth from fantasy in the idea of what happened during the War. The women needed to believe their men fought and died for a worthy cause -- the Lost Cause. It is amazing how people will distort the truth to propel their beliefs -- Donald P

Last week we discussed Blight and how religion has an impact on the memory of the Civil War. So this week I kept an open eye to find how religion helped shape the perspectives of the women during the Civil War. One insert I found particularly interesting was some of their political rhetoric. "The Confederacy, like Christ, might yet rise again" (62).-- George H

Right at the beginning of the book Janney sets the tone for the former Confederate ladies state of mind in the South. She said that the ladies of the South hated the Union soldiers with such disdain, however, being a proper lady of that time period they had to oblige to the men. Its interesting to me to have such hatred of a particular group yet one can't really do anything about it.-- George H

As I was reading I was thinking about how "Confederate traditions and memory have been altered in several ways." (4) Immediately after the war, Lost Cause sentiment started. Women moved into political and social importance by promoting Southern ideals of manhood and their memorial work. I think it's important that Janney shows the roles women played during the war. The nationalism and the memorials proved that women were as important in upholding southern morals and morale. The war was a collective effort because it was on the home front. Civil War collective memory starts when women become active participants. The problems with looking at women's history is that the way the history was written tells us about the time period it was written about. It shows that these women were not given the credit they deserved. - Hannah

I took an American revolution class last semester and I found it interesting to compare the experience of women during that war and southern women during the Civil War. It seeems that their experiences in terms of organizing to aid the soldiers were very similiar, especially the increased politicization that occurred for women in both war. -Sean

Debate topics
Did the restrictions imposed by Reconstruction necessitate that these middle to upper income women were the only option available to the former Confederate states to recover and properly bury their former soldiers? - Jason

How much of a role did the Federal governments actions to recover Union dead and inaction as it pertained to Confederate dead precipitate the LMAs? - Jason

"In Raleigh, North Carolina, occupying troops ensured that the local Ladies organization abstained from organizing a procession on Memorial Day. Members of the association later recalled that 'indeed the threat was made that if the Ladies' Memorial Association, chiefly women and children in mourning, did form a procession, it would be fired on without further warning'" (72). Because of their opposition to the Union and northern reactions to their efforts, such as the one from Raleigh, would you consider the LMAs a radical group? Why of why not? --Carly W.

Janney states that many attempts to create a statewide association failed (50). While she cites autonomy, I am also curious about why they tried to out-do one another. She talks about it a little, but the tension seems like it could be more than just who gets to be remembered/celebrated more. Could there have been some sort of drama with the "cliques" of women? -- Brooke

Janney said in her introduction that national groups such as the United Confederate Veterans consumed all the focus of historians leaving many of the LMAS', which were mainly localized groups, to be forgotten. She then goes on to further explain this as a by-product of a lack of notice of the amount of women involved. However, it seems to show massive amounts of funding and volunteers shortly after the war and in many letters and diaries. Is this forgetfulness on the part of historians or simply did this not interest historians until recently? -Matt

Why did LMAS engage solely in celebrating men's wartime activities? -- Donald P

Questions to ask Dr. Janney next week
I know that this book was Dr. Janney's dissertation, but I was wondering if she would've approached it any different if she didn't have the pressure of writing a dissertation? Basically, I guess I'm asking if she catered to writing a dissertation? -Meg O

Expanding on Meg O's question, I was wondering if Dr. Janney was limited to focusing on just LMA groups in Virginia due to this being her dissertation or was there something specific about the five Virginia LMA's that caused her to focus solely on those groups? --Mary O.

Why did Dr. Janney decide to write about this topic in particular? Other than what was already written under her acknowledgments, how does she connect with this on a deeper level? - Ana Y.

Why were ladies memorial associations in the south mainly upper class women? -Sean

What would a documentary of your book look like? How would you start one? What would you focus on?

How has historiography changed since your book? Would you change anything in it?

Percentages/Numbers of LMA People who are NOT related to confederate soldiers?