Daughters of the Union: Northern Women Fight the Civil War.

Daughters of the Union: Northern Women Fight the Civil War. By Nina Silber. (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 2005. Pp. [x], 332. $29.95, ISBN 0-674-01677-7.)

Like their Confederate sisters, northern women immersed themselves in the patriotic fervor of the Civil War era, finding new opportunities in wage-earning work, war relief effort associations, and hospitals. Nina Silber's examination of Union women on the home front demonstrates that this new world of civic and economic responsibilities was often an inhospitable environment for women. Focusing on those from varying racial and socioeconomic backgrounds, she contends that the paradoxical nature of the female experience stems from the patriarchal and nationalistic emphasis of the Union war effort. Contrary to the Confederacy's patriotic rhetoric of domestic defense, northern patriotism espoused "a more abstract and state-centered nationalism" (p. 24). This nationalistic ethos created limitations to women's wartime opportunities as it "demanded their allegiance more than it encouraged their critical interaction" (p. 11).

Silber offers a new interpretation of the transformative nature of the Union home front. Previous scholars have portrayed the war as a source for the female authority and autonomy that would lead to women's reform efforts, suffragism in particular, in the postwar years. Yet Silber illustrates that in women's patriotic expressions, "the emphasis was often placed on uncomplaining loyalty and obedience" (p. 281). Women continued to define themselves as citizens serving the greater interest of the nation even as they joined reform efforts in the Progressive Era that increasingly concentrated on women's issues. Silber relies on diaries and letters as well as prescriptive literature, newspapers, and government documents, providing a balanced view of women's relationship to the nation-state and its enduring legacy.

Organized thematically, each chapter explores the transformations in women's domestic and civic roles while illuminating the restrictive nature of northern patriotism. Left at home without the economic support of men, women devised creative means of sustaining the household economy, including assuming wage-earning jobs, farm labor, and selling surplus items. The precarious financial conditions of women, however, gained attention from government officials who deemed female suffering unpatriotic and initiated reforms that subordinated women to the state as pensioners and government laborers. This recognition of women as participants in the northern economy resulted more from the emphasis on female sacrifice than from the significance of their labor. The war likewise brought women into partisan politics as battles between Republicans and northern Democrats encouraged their outspoken allegiance. Male political leaders, however, envisioned women as political participants solely in the context of "filial dependents on the national father" (p. 150).

The ties between relief efforts and nationalism also placed more emphasis on women's loyalty than on their civic participation. In this context, women discovered that as members of groups such as the United States Sanitary Commission they had to subordinate individual and community concerns to the national interests of the organization. These limitations also shaped the activities of female nurses. Whereas some scholars have argued that nursing opened the path for greater power and independence for women, Silber illuminates the dependency of women on male authority in the larger bureaucratic structure. Opportunities for women as teachers in the schools for freed-people provided them little opportunity to break from traditional gender prescription and claim a greater degree of autonomy. Concerned about the social consequences of emancipation, these teachers advocated a message of female subservience and national loyalty that bolstered their own secondary status. As Union occupation spread throughout the Confederacy, female subordination to the nation-state extended to southern women as the federal government required their allegiance through loyalty oaths. In the postwar years, northern women continued to confront limitations in their civic engagement. Although organizations such as the Women's Christian Temperance Union and the auxiliary groups of the Grand Army of the Republic allowed women to channel their energies for the community good, they continued to face resistance from male leaders against engaging them as critical political actors.

Daughters of the Union: Northern Women Fight the Civil War is an innovative analysis that is sure to inspire a reconsideration of northern women's patriotism and its long-term results. Silber's analytical strengths and narrative style make this an engaging study for students and scholars of both women's and Civil War history.

VICTORIA E. OTT 

Birmingham-Southern College