Catherine Clinton

Historian Catherine Clinton draws on important new research to illuminate the remarkable life of Mary Lincoln. Her story is inextricably tied with her husband's presidency, yet her life is an extraordinary chronicle on its own. From an aristocratic Kentucky family, she was an educated, well-connected Southern daughter, and when she married a Springfield lawyer she became a Northern wife -- an experience mirrored by thousands of her countrywomen. The Lincolns endured many personal setbacks, including the death of a child and defeats in two Senate races. Mrs. Lincoln herself suffered scorching press attacks. The assassination of her husband haunted her for the rest of her life. Her downward spiral resulted in a brief but traumatizing involuntary incarceration in an asylum and exile in Europe during her later years. One of the most tragic and mysterious of nineteenth-century figures, Mary Lincoln and her story symbolize the pain and loss of Civil War America. - From publisher description.

This study of the much-mythologized Southern belle offers a serious look at the lives of white women and their harsh and restricted place in the slave society before the Civil War. Drawing on the diaries, letters, and memoirs of hundreds of planter wives and daughters, the author sets before us the daily life of the plantation mistress and her ambiguous intermediary position in the hierarchy between slave and master.

A convenient handbook of dates, names, terms, and resources as well as a highly readable overview of the pivotal role of women in a century of profound political and social change. The authors emphasize areas in which scholars have identified important changes (such as suffrage and reform), topics in which researchers are now making great strides (such as racial, ethnic, religious, and regional diversity), and innovative and relatively recent explorations (for example, work on female sexuality).

The ten timely and provocative essays in Taking Off the White Gloves represent the collective wisdom of some of the finest scholars on women's history in the American South. On the eve of the thirtieth anniversary of the Southern Association for Women Historians, this volume brings together some of the outstanding lectures delivered by distinguished members of the association over the past fifteen years. Spanning four centuries of women's experiences in the South, the topics featured in Taking Off the White Gloves range from Native American sexuality and European conquest to woman suffrage in the South, from black women's protest history to the status of women in the historical profession at the end of the twentieth century. Taking Off the White Gloves invites a new understanding of the complexities that surround the history of southern women across race, class, place, and time. A model of innovative and imaginative scholarly historical writing, this book provides fertile ground for young scholars and is sure to inspire new research. This thought-provoking volume has much to offer scholars and students, as well as the general reader.

Describes the Civil War battle of Morris Island, South Carolina, during which Sargeant William H. Carney became the first African American to earn a Congressional Medal of Honor by preserving the flag.

Chronicles the military accomplishments of African Americans who fought for the independence and preservation of the United States while struggling to be treated as equals and recognized for their valor and achievement.

"British stage star turned Georgian plantation mistress, Fanny Kemble is perhaps best known as America's most unlikely abolitionist, whose passionate writings against human bondage made her a heroine of the Union cause. Irrepressible in word and deed, Kemble captured the imaginations of many famous Americans of the antebellum era.". "In 1835, Kemble published her Journal of Residence in America. The book not only aired Kemble's controversial views on slavery but launched a satirical send-up of American society, which her husband maintained would bring shame on their friends and family. The book became an instant bestseller and left New York City "in an uproar.'". "Bringing to bear the tools of both history and biography, Catherine Clinton reveals how one woman's life reflected in microcosm the public battles - over slavery, the role of women, sectionalism - that fueled our nation's greatest conflict and have permanently marked our history."--BOOK JACKET.

The American women who worked for our country's independence in 1776 hoped the new Republic would grant them unprecedented power and influence. But it was not until the next century that a hardy group of pathbreakers began the slow march on the road to autonomy, a road American women continue to travel today. The Other Civil War, first published in 1984, was among the first books to bring together the new accomplishments of the then-infant discipline of women's history. This revised edition offers a thoroughly updated bibliography, including not only new books and articles but also Internet sources from the past fifteen years of innovative scholarship.

Over a decade ago, the publication of Divided Houses ushered in a new field of scholarship on gender and the Civil War. Following in its wake, Battle Scars showcases insights from award-winning historians as well as emerging scholars. This volume depicts the ways in which gender, race, nationalism, religion, literary culture, sexual mores, and even epidemiology underwent radical transformations from when Americans went to war in 1861 through Reconstruction. Examining the interplay among such phenomena as racial stereotypes, sexual violence, trauma, and notions of masculinity, Battle Scars represents the best new scholarship on men and women in the North and South and highlights how lives were transformed by this era of tumultuous change.