ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: "SISTERS OF THE CAPITAL": WHITE WOMEN IN RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, 1860-1880 Edna Susan Barber, Doctor of Philosophy, 1997 Dissertation directed by: Professor Gay L, Gullickson Associate Professor David A, Grimsted Department of History This dissertation examines the effects of the Civil War and Reconstruction on elite, middle-, and working-class white women in Richmond, Virginia. Anne Firer Scott has written that the Civil War was a historical watershed that enabled southern women's movement into broader social, economic, and political roles in southern society. Suzanne Lebsock and George Rable have observed that claims about white Southern women's gains must be measured against the conservatism of Southern society as the patriarchy reasserted itself in the postwar decades. This study addresses this historiographical debate by examining changes in white Richmond women's roles in the workforce, in organizational politics, and the churches. It also analyzes the war's impact on marriage and family relations. Civil War Richmond represented a two-edged sword to its white female population. As the Confederate capital, it provided them with employment opportunities that were impossible before the war began. By 1863 , however, Richmond's population more than doubled as southerners emigrated to the city in search of work or to escape Union armies. This expanding population created extreme shortages in food a nd housing; it also triggered the largest bread riot in the confederacy. With Confederate defeat, many wartime occupations disappeared, although the need for work did not. Widespread postwar poverty led to the emergence of different occupations. Women had formed a number of charitable organizations before the war began. During the war, they developed new associations that stressed women's patriotism rather than their maternity. In the churches, women's wartime work led to the emergence of independent missionary associations that often were in conflict with male-dominated foreign mission boards. Although change occurred, this study concludes that white women's experiences of the Civil War and Reconstruction in Richmond, Virginia, were far more complex than Scott's notion of a historical watershed indicates. The wartime transformation in women's lives was often fraught with irony. Many changes were neither sought nor anticipated by Richmond women. Several came precisely as a direct result of Confederate defeat. Others tended to reinforce patriarchal notions about white women's subordinate status in Southern society. "SISTERS OF THE CAPITAL": WHITE WOMEN IN RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, 1860-1880 by Edna Susan Barber Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland at College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 1997 .' ·1 I I '. I . / i! - / . Advisory Committee: Associate Professor David A. Grimsted, Co-Chair Professor Gay L. Gullickson, Co-Chair Professor Emeritus George H. Callcott Professor Claire G. Moses Associate Professor Robyn L. Muncy ©Copyright by Edna Susan Barber 1997 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have accumulated many professional and personal debts while writing this dissertation. Early in this project, Elsa Barkley Brown, who was also doing research on Richmond, Virginia, graciously invited me to lunch in Washington, o.c., and shared information with me about Richmond sources and repositories. Her advice proved to be an invaluable guide and I thank her for her generosity. My research has taken me to a numbe r of Richmond repositories, including the Virginia Historical Society, the Library of Virginia, the Museum of the Confederacy, the Valentine Museum, the Virginia Baptist Historical Society, and the Beth Ahabah Museum and Archives Trust. In all of these institutions, I have benefited from the expertise and advice of skilled librarians and researchers. In particular, I would like to thank Minor Weisiger at the Library of Virginia for his wise counsel and for keeping me apprised of documents pertaining to my topic. Sandra Gioia Treadway, also of the Library of Virginia, shared her research with me on an early Richmond suffrage association. At the Virginia Historical Society, I benefited from numerous discussions with Frances Pollard, whose extensive ii iii knowledge of the Society's collections made my work much easier. Also at the Society, Nelson Lankford, Giles Cromwell, and the late Waverly Winfree shared their expertise with me on a variety of subjects. Teresa Roane at the Valentine Museum once told me that Gregg Kimball could even get information from a rock and my frequent talks with Gregg over the course of this research never caused me to doubt her word. The Valentine Museum staff--especially Teresa, Gregg, and Barbara--also cared for my psychological well-being on extended research trips by inviting me to join them for dinner and conversation. At the Museum of the Confederacy, Guy Swanson diligently searched the library's collections to fill my requests. He also copied portions of some collections for me when my visits proved all too brief to thoroughly mine the Museum's vast holdings on Richmond women. Doris and Torn Pearson invited me into their Richmond home where Doris Pearson allowed me to interview her about her life in Richmond, Virginia, and her grandmother's work as a Brown's Island cartridge maker. While we talked, Torn Pearson prepared us a home-cooked Southern meal. I am thankful to the Pearsons for their generosity and their Richmond hospitality. My research has also taken me to the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration, the Southern Historical Collection at the University of iv North Carolina, Chapel Hill, the American Jewish Archives, the William R. Perkins Library at Duke University, the Alderman Library at the University of Virginia, and the Earl Gregg Swem Library at the College of William and Mary. At all of these locations, I was welcomed cordially and served by friendly and efficient staffs. I would also like to thank Mary Beverungen and Cindy McCabe of the Inter­ Library Loan Department of the Loyola-Notre Dame Library for cheerfully and efficiently honoring all my requests for books and microfilm. My research has been supported by the Department of History of the University of Maryland, College Park in the form of generous travel grants from the Hearst Travel Fund and a shared Walter Rundell prize in American history. At College Park, I had the opportunity to present an early version of my research on Richmond women's wartime associations at the History Department's Graduate Student Colloquium. I was also the recipient of two generous Mellon Fellowships from the Virginia Historical Society for doing research in the Society's collections. In addition, I was able to discuss my research project in colloquia attended by the Historical Society staff and the community of Mellon scholars--especially Tracey Weis, Sally Hadden, and Al Tillson--who were in residence during portions of the summer in 1991 and 1993. I also presented pieces of my V research at the Valentine Museum in March 1995, and at the Northern Virginia Community College Conference on the history of women in the Chesapeake in November 1996. I am extremely indebted to the members of my dissertation committee--Gay L. Gullickson, David A. Grimsted, George H. Callcott, Robyn L. Muncy, and Claire G. Moses. Their careful reading and insightful comments on this particular phase of my work sharpened and deepened my analysis and saved me from many errors in both content and style. I especially would like to acknowledge the contributions of my two co-directors, David A. Grimsted and Gay L. Gullickson. Their advice has always enriched my work, and I am grateful for their faith in me. I alone am responsible for any errors that remain. I have also benefited from the wisdom and friendship of many other history graduate students at the University of Maryland, College Park, especially those who were part of the Breakfast Club--Cynthia M. Kennedy, Anne Apynys, Marie Jenkins Schwartz, Mary Beth Corrigan, Bruce Thompson, Samuel Brainerd, Mary Jeske, and Jeffrey Hearn. Cindy, Marie, Anne, and Mary Beth have read and commented on dissertation chapters. All have listened to me discuss my work and have helped me resolve research and writing problems over coffee and pancakes at our monthly meetings at a series of diners between Baltimore and College Park. vi Knowing they were travelling the same path made my journey easier. At the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, where I was first a student and am now a teacher, I have been able to continue a life-long career of learning in a vibrant community of scholars whose comments and prayers have sustained me in these last years of dissertation writing. My department chair, Jeanne H. Stevenson, taught me the first women's history I ever learned and set me on the path of my future work. She has nurtured my career and found a place for me on the faculty at Notre Dame, for which I am very thankful. Charles Ritter has been my teacher, mentor, colleague, and friend. He believed in my potential to do graduate work in history before I ever recognized it myself. It is partly because of him that I have reached this point in my academic career and for that I am forever in his debt. Charles also read and commented on portions of the dissertation and corrected several errors in my descriptions of Civil War battles. My final thanks belong to my family, not because they did the least, but because they sustained me the longest. My late father, Milton, took me on picnics to Gettysburg Battlefield when I was a child. I didn't realize, then, that researching the Civil War would occupy so much of my adult life and I am sorry that he did not live to read my findings.