Memoirs of the Confederate War for Independence (Southern Classics Series)

In contrast, the — and especially the — birth cohorts were at peak marriage ages during the war, and a higher proportion of men in those cohorts fought and died. The expectation is that women in these birth cohorts, especially in the South, would have experienced a dramatic marriage squeeze after the war and that men in these cohorts would have had much less competition in their search for wives.

At the national level, the female mean age at first marriage rose slowly and steadily with each cohort, from Likewise, the percentage of women remaining single at older ages rose steadily with each birth cohort from 7. In this context, the percentages of women who never married in the — 7. There is evidence for a modest, short-lived marriage squeeze when results are confined to men and women born in southern census regions, however. There, the mean age at first marriage rose about 0.

There is no indication that women in these cohorts faced a diminished lifetime prospect for marriage. Approximately 92 percent of the southern-born white women in the — cohorts eventually married, roughly equal to the percentage for adjacent cohorts. Men born in the South are unique among the groups shown in Table 2 in having no long-term upward trend toward higher mean age at first marriage.

In contrast to women born in the South between and , men in the — and — southern birth cohorts had about a 0. Overall, however, the war had a modest effect on the timing and incidence of first marriage. Only the deaths of single men would have affected the timing of first marriages. As far as the effect of the deaths of married men is concerned, no informed estimate exists of the number of widows produced by the war.

Unfortunately, there are no comprehensive enrollment statistics for the Confederate army that include the necessary detail. However, information on the marriage status of a sample of Union soldiers was collected by the U. Although the number of war widows cannot be measured with the census, the — IPUMS samples—which recorded current marital status—permit a rough estimate of the regional distribution of widowhood in the period after Table 2 includes estimates of the proportion of native-born white men and women ages 40—49 and 50—59 currently widowed by birth cohort.

Women widowed by the war, of course, could have remarried in the fifteeen or more years following the end of the war, and many women enumerated as widowed in and later censuses lost their husbands before or after the war, but it is nonetheless clear that the Civil War had a major impact on the incidence of widowhood and possibly the rate of remarriage. Figure 3 , a county-level map of widowhood in , highlights quite clearly the sectional impact of the war on subsequent widowhood. The prevalence of widows in the South appears to be concentrated around urban areas and along the Mississippi River, suggesting a degree of geographic mobility among widows to areas offering greater access to wage labor and social support networks and higher overall mortality rates in counties adjacent to the river.

The modest impact of the war on long-term marriage patterns may also be explained in part by adjustments in the age differential between spouses and an increased tendency of men and women to marry individuals outside their customary group. If women relaxed their standards of acceptable partners, the impact of the war on first marriage may have been lessened. Southern women aged 20—24 in were more likely to be married to a younger man the percentage who did so increased from 6. A similar tendency of women to select marriage partners from a somewhat wider pool of eligible spouses is also discernible in the North, but to a much lesser extent than in the South.

One notable exception is the greater tendency of native-born, northern women to many foreign-born men. Between and the percentage of northern, native-born, white women marrying foreign men increased from 5. Finally, the intrinsic dynamics of the postwar American population mitigated the long-term effects of wartime mortality on marriage.

High fertility before the war resulted in large differences in cohort size and rapid elimination of short-term gender imbalances. Table 1 indicates that despite the short-term shock evident in the census, the sex ratio among white men and women aged 20—29 and the marital sex ratio had returned to near their prewar levels by Theoretically, therefore, there were still potential marriage partners for the vast majority of postwar women, though unequal geographic distribution of men and women still exerted strong influence locally.

The new census … shows that in the United States the men outnumber women to the extent of nearly a million. This reverses the popular belief regarding the number of superfluous women, and the ladies are to be congratulated on the new condition of things.

References

This is one of those paradoxical cases in which the minority is more powerful than the majority, and the fewer there are of women the better off they will be. They need no longer be haunted by the fear that there will not be men enough to go around. They will command the matrimonial situation, and may dictate their own terms. There will be a corner in women. Nothing can prevent it. And it will last.

This misproportion exists not only between adults of the two sexes, but extends down into the cradle, so that the coming woman, as well as the woman who is already here, is likely to have things pretty much her own way.

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The old maid has no longer any reason for being. If she remain single, it may, without any special effort of gallantry, be taken for granted that she does so of her own accord. It cannot be because there are not men enough, and to spare. She will probably marry, and have an establishment of her own …. Thus, despite its enormous death toll, the war had a modest, short-lived effect on the timing and incidence of first marriage. On one hand, for a brief period after the war, southern men who had survived the conflict enjoyed demographic advantages in the search for a wife.

Relative to southern men born a generation earlier or later, white men in the postwar South had more potential spouses to choose from and married at a slightly younger age. On the other hand, unmarried southern white women in their twenties at the outbreak of the war faced an acute shortage of available men after the war. Unsurprisingly, a small number of women in this cohort delayed marriage or compromised on marriage partners.

The vast majority eventually married, however, and the war did not create a large cohort of lifelong spinsters or so-called maiden aunts. Although available census data limit the analysis of the timing and incidence of first marriage, an analysis of widowhood in the and later censuses suggests that many women widowed during or after the war were unable to remarry. High levels of widowhood in the postwar South among relatively young women probably reflects both high death rates of southern men during the war and low remarriage rates of southern widows afterward.

Like the Confederate South, France lost between 15 and 20 percent of its young men in a few years of war. But, despite the severe marriage squeeze experienced by French women after the war, the vast majority of them eventually married. Indeed, among French women who came of age during the war, there was only a modest increase in the percentage remaining unmarried at age In examining this paradox, Henry concluded that relatively small changes in age preferences compensated for the large imbalance in potential marriage partners.

In addition, as many historians have argued, the war challenged traditional gender roles and individual marriages in diverse and interesting ways. The demographic evidence highlights several promising areas for future research. The degree of community diversity in demographic behavior is an interesting and largely unanswered question, especially given known patterns of local enlistments and the clustering of war mortality in specific companies and regiments.

Although low sample densities in existing IPUMS census samples currently prevent a detailed investigation of variations by community, higher sample densities in future samples and detailed community studies by individual researchers may show that marriage patterns in specific communities varied widely from the sectional patterns observed in this article. The results on sectional marriage patterns discussed here will provide a standard by which other scholars can compare other communities or individual marriages. A more promising area for research is the social demography of widowhood.

There is a stark, surprising contrast between the extremely high levels of widowhood in the postwar South and the paucity of historical research. Nearly one in three southern white women over the age of 40 were currently widowed in , representing about , women and many more dependent children.

Memoirs of the Confederate War for Independence -

Although most of these women were not war widows, the war clearly contributed to marked sectional differences in the rate of widowhood. Despite these staggering numbers and the growing interest in the social history of the war and its aftermath, there are almost no studies of postwar southern widowhood.

How these women and their families coped with the dire economic environment of the postbellum South deserves the attention of social historians. National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. Author manuscript; available in PMC Dec Author information Copyright and License information Disclaimer. Jones is an assistant professor of anthropology at Stanford University.

Recensioner

See other articles in PMC that cite the published article. Open in a separate window. Italicized values are based on — cases. The authors would like to thank Catherine Fitch. Steven Ruggles, Douglas Bradburn. Diane Sommerville, Orville Vemon Burton. Stephanie McCurry, and participants in the University of Minnesota Early American Workshop for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Some Preliminary Demographic Speculations. Journal of American History. A History of Marriage and the Nation. Vinovskis considered men of military age to be those listed as 13 through 43 years old in the census. The estimate of the ratio of southern men killed in the war is based in part on the number of deaths among Union troops.

Wilson Charles Reagan, Ferris William. Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. The Reconstruction of White Southern Womanhood, — From Pedestal to Politics, — More recent studies, while agreeing that the war challenged traditional gender roles, suggest that southern women did not eagerly embrace change.

See Faust Mothers of Invention. Women and the Crisis of Southern Nationalism. The Civil War as a Crisis in Gender: LeeAnn Whites has made the most forceful case for interpreting the war as a crisis in gender. Gender and the Civil War.

Gender and Sexuality in the American Civil War. Writing the Civil War: The Quest to Understand. Family and Community in Edgefield, South Carolina. Kinship and Neighborhood in a Southern Community: Orange County, North Carolina, — The Clays of Alabama: Joy and in Sorrow: Women, Family, and Marriage in the Victorian South, — Union Soldiers and the Northern Home Front: Wartime Experiences, Postwar Adjustments. Only white marriage patterns can be ascertained in the prewar period; the and censuses enumerated slaves in a separate, more limited population schedule, and because the slave schedule did not group or identify family members, it is impossible to infer marital status and estimate age at marriage.

Ruggles Steven, et al. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: The samples are available for free public downloading at http: IPUMS samples have been used in diverse projects including studies of the onset of fertility control in the nineteenth century, long-term trends in interstate migration, long-term changes in American family structure, and the migration of Appalachian whites to the Midwest in the twentieth century. For example, see Hacker J. New Evidence on the Internal Migration of Americans, — The Transformation of American Family Structure.

Appalachians in the Great Migration. Journal of Interdisciplinary History. History of the Family: Open Preview See a Problem?

Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. The review from Amazon. A lot of the personal accounts I have read were written years after the war and were not as accurate as they could have been had they been written sooner. But, most of the veteran's had a lot more to contend with, than wr The review from Amazon.

But, most of the veteran's had a lot more to contend with, than writing a book. Von Borcke,sometime lieutenant of the 3rd Regiment of Dragoon Guards, came to Virginia from Prussia at the beginning of the war to offer his services to the Confederacy. Seeking adventure in the new land, he fell in with Jeb Stuart and found all he needed. Jeb Stuart made Von Borke one of his aides. Von Borcke writes about a lot of small details of Virginia at that time, that someone who was a native Virginian, would not have made note of because of already being familiar with these.

He also has written of many humorous events that took place in camp and on the battlefield. Gives a good account of Stuart from someone who was close to Stuart in the good times and bad times. You will not regrett taking the time to read this to read this book. Product description If you HATE the book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words, this book is for you.

So everything you see here is almost same as original version. It may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred, errant marks, etc. We hope you enjoy and are satisfied with our book. Please read before you purchase. Kindle Edition , pages. Published November 4th by Acheron Press first published January 1st To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Memoirs of the Confederate War for Independence , please sign up. Be the first to ask a question about Memoirs of the Confederate War for Independence.

Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Jan 14, Kim rated it it was amazing Shelves: Heros Von Borcke starts his story with his journey from Prussia to the states to join with the Confederate army. He was a Prussian soldier who after enlisting in the Confederate army was chief of staff and Major under General J. Lee which allowed him to give a much more personal look into the lives of these men, he also wrote of the privates that he fought beside.

Memoirs of the Confederate War for Independence

This was something that was certainly Heros Von Borcke starts his story with his journey from Prussia to the states to join with the Confederate army. A crowd-pleaser that was turned into a beloved movie and something of a flop of a Broadway musical , Big Fish is your classic story about a father-son relationship, heightened by its imaginative and fantastical characters — giants, witches, mermaids, and one huge fish. This incredible novel follows two brothers deep in the Louisiana swamp who must repair their fractured relationship to battle a ruthless gangster in the years following World War I.

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