Essay: The Northern Homefront: A Quest to Understand

http://m.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fpeoplescontest.psu.edu%2Fpsul%2Fpeoplescontest%2Fresource%2Ffeatured-materials%2Fquest.html&h=7AQEioIQl

From A People's Contest at Penn State comes a very analytical essay about various groups (women, children, African Americans) on the Northern homefront, which has been getting considerably more attention of late. Working women are cited - in this case, seamstresses sewing for the army striking for better pay. I've come across one instance so far of that in the arsenals: in the fall of 1864, women struck at the Confederate States Laboratory in Richmond. They were fired and then replaced. This is a must-read, full of heavy-hitting authors in the field.

Photograph: Confederate States Laboratory

The Confederate Interior

From the Virginia Historical Society is an Alexander Gardner photograph of the Confederate States Laboratory on Brown's Island shortly after the fall of Richmond. Detailed description on the page.

Review: "Burying the Dead but not the Past: Ladies' Memorial Associations and the Lost Cause"

Earlier, I posted a great video from Caroline Janney of Purdue about women's involvement in the Civil War. She also has written a book called "Burying the Dead but not the Past: Ladies' Memorial Associations and the Lost Cause."

Many people think that Southern women's involvement in memorializing both the dead and the cult of the Lost Cause (read: "we may have lost, but we did it nobly, dang it") did not begin in earnest until the 1890s when the United Daughters of the Confederacy was established. Janney shows that this actually began during the war itself when nursing and sewing circles and the like evolved just after the war into Ladies' Memorial Associations. The LMAs were primarily the domain of middle and upper-class ladies who had such time and resources, as well as lingering anti-Yankee feelings.  There were LMAs all over the old Confederacy (which often helped each other financially), but Janney focuses on those in Virginia - particularly in Richmond, Lynchburg, Winchester, Petersburg, and Fredericksburg. It goes on even after the establishment of the UDC, which supplanted the LMAs, up until about the First World War.
Ladies' Memorial Associations sprang from a great need in the postwar days: to reinter Confederate soldiers with proper burials as well as to commerorate them, along with the Lost Cause. Part of this was out of anger toward Union men who disinterred the bodies of their own men from Southern ground for reburial, which sparked feeling that Confederate graves were being desecrated. Large cemeteries for the purpose of reburial were established, such as Hollywood and Oakwood in Richmond.
The postwar years were still part of the Victorian era, in which women were "supposed" to be apolitical, and not involve themselves with politics as men did. However, in the LMA's work in memorializing fallen Southern soldiers, it kept the idea of the Lost Cause alive because ladies often did work with living former Confederates. Because LMAs were run by women (and not men, as most of their Northern equivilents were), it looked like they were simply remembering their loved ones rather than keeping the ideology of the former Confederacy going for future generations.

"Burying the Dead" is a great resource for those students and scholars of Southern women's involvement in the postwar era. As with many scholarly works, it may be a bit dry for the average reader outside the field. However, for those so inclined, it is a great addition to your Civil War/Reconstruction book collection.

Walking Tour of Civil War Richmond

Industry and Commerce: Richmond Civil War Tour from CivilWarTraveler.com
Civil War Traveler has put together a Civil War walking tour of Richmond that you can listen to right from your phone. One of the stops is near Brown's Island, today a spot for concerts and festivals. Since only two wartime buildings still stand in Richmond, tourists need to use their imagination a bit.

Reconstructing Richmond

An American Turning Point: The Civil War in Virginia - Reconstructing Richmond - Virginia Historical Society - Virginia Historical Society
The Virginia Historical Society with a local radio station has recorded segments about life in wartime Richmond, including one about the Brown's Island explosion. Listening to them all paints a broad picture of Civil War Richmond.

Podcast: Brown's Island Explosion

http://www2.vcdh.virginia.edu/civilwar/podcasts/index.php?video=Tredegar_Explosion

From the Civil War Center at Tredeger Iron Works in Richmond comes a series of podcasts, including this one about the Brown's Island Laboratory explosion. The Center is an awesome place, btw. I went there about 10 years ago after begging my parents to stop at some Civil War sites on the way home from the beach.

PS. Sorry about the slightly outdated entries that just got posted. Just figuring out the new Blogger app.

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Article: The Forgotten Fighters

http://www.styleweekly.com/gyrobase/the-forgotten-fighters/Content?oid=1590284&storyPage=1

My sister, In the Swan's Shadow, found another great article about prominent women of Richmond during the Civil War, including Phoebe Yates Pember, the Jewish matron of Chimborazo Hospital; Mary Elizabeth Bowser, a servant of the Davis family who served as a Union spy; and Mary Ryan, the 18 year old Irish immigrant whose actions caused the explosion at the Confederate Laboratory in 1863.

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Page: Virginia United Daughters of the Confederacy erect monument to victims of Brown's Island explosion

http://vaudc.org/browns_island.html

This is from the site for the Virginia division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. In 2001, they erected a memorial to the female victims of the explosion on Brown's Island in 1863.

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Page: Historical Marker Database, Confederate States Laboratory in Richmond

http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=24098

Another great link from the Historical Marker Database about marking the place of the Confederate States Laboratory in Richmond. Sort of strange that Brown's Island, once a place of destruction and tragedy, is now a place for concerts and festivals.

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Video: Death and Mourning in the Civil War

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z52gzLtBS5E&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Excellent video about mourning and the concept of "the good death" during the Civil War by the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, VA. Awesome place, btw. I have a book about mourning featuring their collection on the subject that I bought on my first visit there when I was 16.

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