Remembering in Black and White: Missouri Women’S Memorial Work, 1860-1910
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REMEMBERING IN BLACK AND WHITE: MISSOURI WOMEN’S MEMORIAL WORK, 1860-1910 A Dissertation Presented to The Faculty of the Graduate School At the University of Missouri In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy By MEGAN B. BOCCARDI LeeAnn Whites, Dissertation Supervisor DECEMBER 2011 © Copyright by Megan Boccardi 2011 All Rights Reserved The undersigned, appointed by the dean of the Graduate School, have examined the dissertation entitled REMEMBERING IN BLACK AND WHITE: MISSOURI WOMEN’S MEMORIAL WORK, 1860-1910 Presented by Megan Boccardi A candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy And hereby certify that, in their opinion, it is worthy of acceptance. Professor LeeAnn Whites Professor Catherine Rymph Professor Treva Lindsey Professor Theodore Koditschek ____________________________________________________________ Professor Wilma King …To my family ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Throughout the course of writing this dissertation, I have received help, guidance, and support from a multitude of people. First and foremost I must thank my advisor, Dr. LeeAnn Whites. Dr. Whites’ comments, advice, support, and direction has done more for me in writing this dissertation than I could ever put into words. I would not be the historian that I am today without her. I would also like to thank the members of my committee, Dr. Wilma King, Dr. Catherine Rymph, Dr. Theodore Koditschek, and Dr. Treva Lindsey, for taking the time to read this work and providing valuable feedback throughout this process. I would like to acknowledge the financial support received from the Richard S. Brownlee Fund, the James S. Rollins Slavery Atonement Endowment, the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics, and the History Department of the University of Missouri. Without their generous funding, this dissertation would not be possible. While living in Columbia, my fellow graduate students became part of my academic family. I am privileged to call Tiffany Ziegler, Ryan Stockwell, T.J. Tomlin, Nina Verbanaz, Kyle Miller, Autumn Dolan, Dave Brock, and Steve Smith my friends and colleagues. I must give special thanks to my dissertation group, Andrea Weingartner, Mike Snodgrass, Leroy Rowe, and Joe Beilein who all read my work more times than imaginable and pushed me to be a better historian. I also must thank my Quincy friends, Matt Bergman, Gina Bergman, Evanne Mast, Kristen Liesen, Holly Andress-Martin, and Deirdre Fagan for their support in the last two years of this project. ii Finally, I must thank my family, Dennis Boccardi, Mary Boccardi, Alicia Boccardi, Nancy Barrett and family, Dennis Boccardi and family, and Devin Boccardi. This dissertation has been a long journey and my family has been part of it every step of the way. I imagine that they are even happier than I am that it is complete! iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................ ii LIST OF TABLES .............................................................................................................. v LIST OF MAPS ................................................................................................................. vi INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER ONE: “Fighting the Battles of Life”: The Founders of the Missouri Association, 1860-1865 .............................................................................................. 20 CHAPTER TWO: “Now you call my children your property”: Life as Little Dixie slave, 1860-1865 ................................................................................................................... 59 CHAPTER THREE: “It is peculiarly women’s province to go about doing good:” The Founders in postwar Little Dixie ................................................................................ 94 CHAPTER FOUR: “Slavery dies hard:” Freedwomen of Little Dixie and the transition from slavery to freedom, 1865-1880” ....................................................................... 128 CHAPTER FIVE: “Because of what the past has made us:” The formation of the Missouri Association of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, 1880-1905 ...... 161 CHAPTER SIX: “Illicit in their Inception”: Little Dixie Freedwomen, pensions, and the memory of the Civil War, 1885-1910 ....................................................................... 192 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................... 222 VITA ............................................................................................................................... 249 iv LIST OF TABLES Figure Page 1.1: Twenty Founding Members of the Missouri United Daughters of the Confederacy ......................................................................58 2.1: Twenty Little Dixie Slave Women .............................................................................65 2.2: Little Dixie Slave Women and their Men’s USCT Information .................................84 3.1: Founder’s Age and Marital Status ............................................................................101 3.2: Changing Occupations of the Founder’s Men ..........................................................111 4.1: Little Dixie Slave Women and their Men’s USCT Information ...............................131 4.2: Changing Population of Little Dixie ........................................................................151 6.1: Population Shift between 1880 and 1900 .................................................................202 6.2: Status of African American and white populations in Little Dixie ..........................205 6.3: USCT Soldier’s Most Common Injuries ..................................................................212 v LIST OF MAPS Map Page 1. Little Dixie, Missouri .....................................................................................................23 vi INTRODUCTION In the late nineteenth century, at the height of the memorialization movement in the United States, varying groups of women, northern, southern, white and black, used the memory of the Civil War to achieve their specific social, economic, and political goals. In Missouri, both southern sympathizing white women and African American participated in this movement. In 1898, Southern sympathizing white women of Missouri organized as the State Association of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Beginning in 1879, after the passage of the Arrears Act, Missouri’s African American women collected evidence, testimonies, and documents to file their claims for a Federal Pension for their men’s service in the Civil War. Although using differing methods, the actions of both groups of women indicate the ways in which the Civil War continued to shape their lives. Divided by slavery in the antebellum period and by the post war persistence of racial hierarchies, this close examination of the memorial work of forty Missouri women, twenty southern sympathizing women and twenty African American women, explores the ways in which their gendered experiences as mothers, wives and daughters arguably united them.1 1 Minutes of the Second Annual Meeting of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (Missouri: United Daughters of the Confederacy, Missouri Division, 1899), 4; Mary Francis Berry, My Face is Black is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005); Historical works on memorialization have taken varying approaches to the subject focusing on issues race, gender, class, and politics. Some of these works include, but are not limited to the following: C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877-1913 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Press, 1972); Gaines Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South: 1865-1913 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981); Charles Reagan Wilson, Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1900 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980); W. Fitzhugh Brundage, “White Women and the Politics of Historical Memory in the New South: 1880-1920,” in Jumpin’ Jim Crow: Southern Politics from Civil War to Civil Rights, eds. Jane Dailey, Glenda Gilmore and Bryant Simons (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 115-139; Whites, LeeAnn, The Civil War as a Crisis in Gender: 1860-1890 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995); Davis Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001); William Blair, Cities of the 1 This study begins on the eve of the secession crisis in Missouri and the events that followed during the four years of Civil War. In 1861, southern sympathizing white men of Missouri enlisted to fight for the Confederate cause. Their women remained at home working as caregivers to their families, managers of their farms, and supporters of the war effort. Two years later, African American men volunteered to serve in the Union Army, leaving their women often still enslaved in the white household and responsible for their own families. The intimate organization of the southern slaveholding household dictated that these women experienced the war together despite their loyalties to opposing sides of the conflict. Southern sympathizing women wanted Confederate triumph which included the preservation of slavery and southern culture. African American