Between 1861 and 1865, approximately 200, 000 women were widowed by the deaths of Civil War soldiers. They recorded their experiencesin diaries, letters, scrapbooks, and pension applications.In Love and Duty, Angela Esco Elder draws on these materialsas well as songs, literary works, and material objects likemourning gownsto explorewhite Confederate widows’stories, examining therecords of theircourtships, marriages, loves, and losses to understand their complicated relationship with the Confederate state. Elder shows how, in losing their husbands, many women acquired significant cultural capital, which positioned them as unlikely actors to gain political influence.Confederateofficialdomchampioned a particularimageof white widowhoodthe young wife who selflessly transferred her monogamous love from her dead husband to the deathless cause for which he’d fought. But a closerlook reveals that these women spent their new cultural capital with great shrewdness and variety. Not only were they aware of the social status gained in widowhood;theyalsoused that status on their own terms, turning mourning into a highly politicized act amid the battle to establish the Confederacy’s legitimacy. Death forced all Confederate widows to reconstruct their lives, but only some would choose to play a role in reconstructing the nation.
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