A Family of Women: The Carolina Petigrus in Peace and War.

A Family of Women: The Carolina Petigrus in Peace and War. By Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease. (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, c. 1999. Pp. xviii, 328. $29.95, ISBN 0-8078-2505-0.)

This well-written study of the Petrigrus of South and North Carolina provides historians fascinating insights into the personal activities and thoughts of the women of an extended family. The authors chart the rise and fall of this influential and privileged family from the early national period through the postbellum years and offer their readers a window into both rural and urban southern life. Jane and William Pease have culled a vast collection of letters, diaries, and other personal records to reveal the dynamics of marriage, birth, and death, as well as female flirtation, adultery, and family gossip. If the truism that fact is more interesting than fiction needs proof, it is to be found in A Family of Women.

This book offers intimate views of female thoughts, activities, and anxieties. Many Petigru women, despite wealth and privilege, or perhaps because of it, found marriage to be unsatisfying. Driven by the imperative to marry well, most did not wed the man of their dreams. Many of the husbands drank or were abusive or insensitive to their wives' needs. Families like the Petigrus also experienced fluctuating financial circumstances despite the outward appearance that they enjoyed a charmed existence. The region's volatile economy often left elite clans overextended on credit. The Petrigru women represented both the best and worst aspects of their class. They shared produce from their plantations, cared for nieces and nephews who had overstayed their welcomes, and nursed one another through the cycles of childbirth and ill health. But these often supportive, thoughtful, and affectionate women could also denounce a sister's flirtations with Union soldiers and write nasty comments criticizing a new sister-in-law's bad teeth and brash manners.

While most Petigrus supported the Confederacy, Civil War loyalties split the family. The pro-Confederate Petigrus displayed little tolerance toward their patriarch, and two of his daughters, whose Union loyalties were all too clear. Wealth provided no protection against the conflict, which brought much devastation, poverty, and death to this extended family. Mothers and their children grew thin as food supplies dwindled. Fathers, brothers, and sons died in battle. Yet some Petigrus refused to compromise their privileged style and station. Adele Petigru Allston insisted on staging an elegant Charleston wedding for her daughter in June 1863, including a dress of Brussels net and white silk and, for refreshments, an abundance of food and French champagne. A few family members could not fathom the demise of slavery and moved slaves inland in an effort to protect their property during the war. We see a familiar tale reenacted after 1865 as families faced destitution and men failed to cope with change. The Petigru women and their daughters, finally accepting the reality of the end of their elite status, carded on as wage earners.

African American emancipation proved a shock to this family that had enjoyed the status that slavery brought them. Historians desiring a clearer sense of white southern women's treatment toward slaves will find no definitive answer here, for the Petrigru women could be both kind and unfeeling, but their responses to blacks after the Civil War were clearer. Racism crept into their vocabulary, and they showed little tolerance for black female laborers who failed to live up to white standards of behavior. A Family of Women reinforces rather than challenges what historians have written about antebellum and Civil War women. The book is not driven by theory or analysis but by the stuff that makes history so compelling. It adds another fascinating, personal chapter to our understanding of southern women and family life.

SALLY G. MCMILLEN Davidson College