Here are the life stories of three women who connect us to our national past and provide windows onto a social and political landscape that is strangely familiar yet shockingly foreign. Berkin focuses on three “accidental heroes” who left behind sufficient records to allow their voices to be heard clearly and to allow us to see the world as they did. Though they held no political power themselves, all three had access to power and unique perspectives on events of their time. Angelina Grimké Weld, after a painful internal dialogue, renounced the values of her Southern family's way of life and embraced the antislavery movement, but found her voice silenced by marriage to fellow reformer Theodore Weld. Varina Howell Davis had an independent mind and spirit but incurred the disapproval of her husband, Jefferson Davis, when she would not behave as an obedient wife. Though ill-prepared and ill-suited for her role as First Lady of the Confederacy, she became an expert political lobbyist for her husband's release from prison. Julia Dent Grant, the wife of Ulysses S. Grant, was a model of genteel domesticity who seemed content with the restrictions of marriage and motherhood, even though they led to alternating periods of fame and disgrace, wealth and poverty. Only late in life did she glimpse the price of dependency. Throughout, Berkin captures the tensions and animosities of the antebellum era and the disruptions, anxieties, and dislocations generated by the war and its aftermath. Winner of the 2010 Colonial Dames of America Book Award
Illuminating a frequently neglected but extremely significant side of military history, "Intimate Strategies" is a rare and fascinating look at a critical aspect of Civil War commanders' lives--their marriages.
Chapter 24: "Is this my destiny?
... 137, 167; Patsey Leach, 115; Rachel Jones, 145; Reef Velard, 165; Sallie Crane, 139; Sarah (former Thomas slave), ... 191, 192, 252n9 Fields, Karen, 191, 192, 252n9 Fifteenth Amendment, 121–122 First Confiscation Act (1861), 79, ...
... MC; Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee, eds., The Dictionary of National Biography: From the Earliest Times to 1900 (1917; repr., London: Oxford University Press, 1967), 9:1203–1205; Lady Mildred Hope to VHD, 16 Aug.
Yet Berkin also reveals that it was not just the men who fought on the front lines, as in the story of Margaret Corbin, who was crippled for life when she took her husband’s place beside a cannon at Fort Monmouth.
The story of the women of one New Jersey family as they overcame tragedy and navigated the social, political, and economic complexities of post-Civil War America.
Fannie Boyd had automatically assumed that whatever was there would be like the " rose - colored " West Point , which had a large complement of troops to care for it and a surrounding community of doctors , schools , churches ...
A military sedan would pick her up at Andrews Air Force Base. Could she attend? Bonnie hesitated. The twelfth. When was that? Friday. How can I be ready by Friday? That means I'd have to fly out on Thurs- day. What about the children?
A study of wife beating in the United States, with reference to and victims' comments on the physical, psychological, and social effects of a complex problem
Jane Hall of Lancaster County agreed to indenture her daughter to Ruth Sydnor in 1729 under terms nearly identical to those for white servant girls. Ann Hall was to be taught to read, sew, knit, and spin before being released at age ...