Confederate Reckoning

The Confederacy began to draft men for the war effort in the spring of 1861, the first draft in American history. This draft justified the widespread belief that the government had an obligation to protect soldiers’ families. The voices of women and claims of their sacrifices were often invoked, even required, in petitions toward officials asking for relief from and exemptions to the draft. The number of letters and petitions for women asking for relief from the draft increased after 1861. McCurry suggests this was the beginning of a new way poor white women interacted with the state, where instead of identifying themselves as just, for example, “a poor wife,” they began to consciously assert themselves as “soldiers’ wives” (145).

While poor and working-class women asked for protection through relief from the military draft, elite women demanded protection from their families’ own enslaved laborers. However, they identified themselves through their husbands’ surnames, not as soldiers’ wives. Their position as members of the ruling class entitled them protection, while poorer white women had to rely on their identity as soldier’s wives, arguing that because they had sacrificed their husbands and sons to the war effort, they had a right to protection and state support.