Texas Women and the Civil War

SECESSION

Unidentified southern girls -- From Library of Congress

“His wife wouldn't let him in at the front

door!”

“That cause can never perish which is sustained by the smiles and approval of our noble Southern women!”

PREPARATION

Frank Leslie’s Illustrated

The Texas Hunters and Marshall Guards flag is the handiwork of a group of young ladies of Marshall and Harrison County and was presented to the Texas Hunters and Marshall Guards on the occasion of their entry into the conflict.

Address of Miss Mary B. Breeding

“A Texas mother, wife or sister, had rather know that the son, husband or brother, lay beneath the cold sod pierced by many bullets, than to know that his cheek blanched or that he turned back to the foe and let his colors trail in the dust.”

Reprinted in Bellville Countryman, June 5, 1861

“All the young men that won't go to the wars, ought to put on hoops and long gowns. If they think they might stay at home and marry while the choice young men are gone to the wars . . . they are much mistaken! A man that won't protect his country won't protect his wife.”

“Helen” Colorado County Citizen

GENDER ROLES

If my sphere permitted me to go to the wars, I should have taken delight in going some time ago, and nothing could have prevented me from going.

DOING A MAN’S BUSINESS

“I am so sick of trying to do a man’s business when I am nothing but, a poor contemptible piece of multiplying human flesh tied to the house by a crying young one, looked upon as belonging to a race of inferior beings.” Lizzie Neblett

WOMEN’S WORK

Cotton Cards

WAR REACHES TEXAS

“Mother is talking strongly of packing up and moving off to a place of safety, but I know not where we will find that. I wish

there was such a place.”

SEPARATION FROM LOVED ONES

“This separation from you is almost insupportable, but should

you never come, oh what will become of me.”

SLAVE WOMEN

“My love is just as great as it was the first night I married you, and I

hope it will be so with you…If I never see you again, I hope to

meet you in heaven. There is no time night or day but what I am

studying about you.”

BEYOND CONFEDERATE TEXAS

“An order passed that women should not be permitted to be present at the hanging. The women were not noisy,

but the signs of deep despair was manifested by the heaving breast, the

falling tears, the heavy groans as though the heart was breaking, and all

the vitals of life were giving way.”

WAR’S END

“If my husband, dear as he is to me, was so lost to the honor that fills the breast of every true Southerner, as to desert his post, I would disown him,

and sue for a divorce and petition the Legislature to change the names of my children so that they would not have

to bear the name of a deserter.”

•www2.uttyler.edu/vbetts/ Vicki Betts Website at University of Tyler (see Newspaper Research, Texas Women Public Voices)

• Widows by the Thousand: The Civil War Letters of Theophilus and Harriet Perry• A Rebel Wife in Texas: The Diary and

Letters of Elizabeth Scott Neblett • Maria von Blücher's Corpus Christi