Southern Families at War: Loyalty and Conflict in the Civil War South.

Edited by Catherine Clinton. (New York and other cities: Oxford University Press, c. 2000. Pp. [xii], 244. Paper, $17.95, ISBN 0-19-513684-5; cloth, $35.00, ISBN 0-19-513683-7.)

By calling it a "brothers' war," Americans have long portrayed the Civil War as a disruption in the most honored of human ties: those between families. The twelve essays contained in this volume, however, explore the effects of the war on southern families well beyond the ritualized image of brothers fighting on opposite sides in an epic contest. From slave marriages to religion to extended family networks, the topics, sources, and approaches of these essays vary widely. Originally prepared for a conference on the Civil War South, these articles present new theoretical concepts and original research on family structures and relationships during the Civil War era.

In the first three articles, Michael P. Johnson examines advertisements in the Christian Recorder, Michelle A. Krowl uses Freedmen's Bureau records, and Donald R. Shaffer analyzes Civil War pension files to effectively demonstrate the Civil War's impact on slave families. Krowl argues that the interference of the government during and after the Civil War drastically changed slave families, while Johnson and Shaffer show much more continuity in values and structures. Two other articles also examine the effect of the war on southern minorities: Lauren F. Winner writes about the experiences of Jews who converted to Christianity, while Anne J. Bailey explores the attempts of German families to prove their loyalty to the Confederacy and also merely to survive.

While the other articles focus more exclusively on the dominant white culture in the Civil War South, the diverse topics portray the large variety of southern family experiences. The Fain family studied by Daniel W. Stowell used evangelical faith to sustain a stricter adherence to gender ideals, while in Henry Walker's essay, the Claytons' letters indicated drastic changes in their gender ideals as the result of Victoria Clayton's increased activities in her husband's absence. While some families maintained gender roles and others could not, Judith Lee Hunt, E. Susan Barber, and Jennifer Lynn Gross all examine other changes in familial ideals forced by the Civil War. Hunt's Middleton family increasingly placed more emphasis on the nuclear unit and less on the extended family network so important before the war. Barber finds families being formed in unfamiliar courtship rituals as a result of the population explosion in Richmond during the war, while Gross examines southern society's attempts to come to terms with the large number of widows left behind because of the war.

Two of the most challenging new interpretations of Civil War families in this volume are presented by Amy E. Murrell and Ted Ownby. Murrell analyzes women's letters to Confederate leaders. She argues that these letters indicate that the writers were not losing faith in the government or the cause when they asked for their male family members to be sent home, but instead they were arguing that the needs of particular families merged with the needs of the Confederate government. Ted Ownby finds that soldiers' ideals of the afterlife did not include paternalism because slaves did not make up part of the family in heaven. And even though soldiers imagined a heaven that included mixed-gender family units, patriarchy was replaced by love and rendered unnecessary.

Overall, the volume provides a variety of interesting new interpretations based on impressive research into families and family structures during the Civil War. Although all are not equally effective at presenting research or arguing theses, these essays contribute significantly to the important and growing field of social history in the Civil War South.

ANGELA BOSWELL
Henderson State University