Civil War wives : the lives and times of Angelina Grimké Weld, Varina Howell Davis, and Julia Dent Grant / Carol Berkin.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Here are the life stories of three women who connect us to our national past and provide windows onto a social and political landscape that is strangely familiar yet shockingly foreign.

Berkin focuses on three "accidental heroes" who left behind sufficient records to allow their voices to be heard clearly and to allow us to see the world as they did. Though they held no political power themselves, all three had access to power and unique perspectives on events of their time.

Angelina Grimké Weld, after a painful internal dialogue, renounced the values of her Southern family's way of life and embraced the antislavery movement, but found her voice silenced by marriage to fellow reformer Theodore Weld. Varina Howell Davis had an independent mind and spirit but incurred the disapproval of her husband, Jefferson Davis, when she would not behave as an obedient wife. Though ill-prepared and ill-suited for her role as First Lady of the Confederacy, she became an expert political lobbyist for her husband's release from prison. Julia Dent Grant, the wife of Ulysses S. Grant, was a model of genteel domesticity who seemed content with the restrictions of marriage and motherhood, even though they led to alternating periods of fame and disgrace, wealth and poverty. Only late in life did she glimpse the price of dependency.

Throughout, Berkin captures the tensions and animosities of the antebellum era and the disruptions, anxieties, and dislocations generated by the war and its aftermath.

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

One "WE ARE A NATION OF CHANGES" America at the Crossroads in the 1830s "it was the best of times. It was the worst of times." When Charles Dickens penned these now familiar words of contradiction, he was not speaking of the United States in 1830. Yet the contradiction surely applied, for during this turbulent decade Americans agreed that their country was changing rapidly. But whether the changes they witnessed were for the good or bad, they sharply disagreed. No one could deny that the nation was growing, both physically and in population. Eight new states had come into the Union since the century began and two more would join before the decade ended. The nation's population had soared, growing from under four million in 1790 to almost thirteen million by 1830. Although the great wave of German and Irish immigration lay ahead in the 1840s, roughly a hundred thousand new Americans would arrive in the United States before the decade was over. Yet if the nation was growing larger, there was a sense that it was also becoming more intimate, for a revolution in transportation and communication was in full swing. Toll roads crisscrossed the country, creating a transportation network unimagined in the eighteenth century. The heavily traveled National Road had snaked its way through the Appalachian Mountains since the 1820s, and by 1830 it reached as far as the Ohio River. Construction on a state-of-the-art highway soon followed, and by 1838 it carried people and produce as far as Illinois. A system of canals, including the famous Erie Canal, now linked the western countryside to the cities of the Northeast. Americans were already growing accustomed to the marvels of new technology, for since the late eighteenth century, steamboats with fanciful names such as Car of Neptune, Firefly, and Vesuvius could be seen on the Hudson, Delaware, and Savannah rivers. But an even faster, if noisier, form of transportation was beginning to appear on the landscape: the railroad. Americans who had seen Peter Cooper's "Tom Thumb" steam locomotive make its first run in 1830 knew they had been given a glimpse of the future. Cheaper printing technology and improved mail service were creating a more intimate America as well. Letters posted in Buffalo, New York, sped south in the holds of canal boats, reaching New York City in a remarkable six days. The same letter could reach New Orleans in only two weeks. Affordable books, pamphlets, and newspapers now reached homes that had once boasted of nothing but a family Bible. The statistics were dazzling: in 1790, 92 newspapers were published in the United States, with a circulation of four million; by 1835, there were 1,258 newspapers reaching ninety million readers. By 1836, instant communication seemed possible, as Samuel F. B. Morse perfected his electric telegraph. Changes in the American economy were no less dramatic. In the North, production had begun to move out of the household and into shops and factories, while in the South, King Cotton claimed its throne. The signs of prosperity were everywhere: not only in urban mansions and Southern plantation homes but also in the luxuries that graced the tables of the nation's middle class. Signs of expanding democracy were just as obvious, at least for the white male population. The older notion that only men of property should enjoy full citizenship had given way to the demand for wider participation in choosing those who made the laws and set the policies for the nation. The "era of the common man" was in full swing by the 1830s, and as the number of voters swelled, a new breed of professional politicians emerged to woo their support and to offer policies that served their interests. Along with these changes came a new national ethos. The brash nationalism that had followed the War of 1812 produced a cultural revolution. Young American artists turned their backs on Old World subjects, preferrin Excerpted from Civil War Wives: The Lives and Times of Angelina Grimke Weld, Varina Howell Davis, and Julia Dent Grant by Carol Berkin All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

This book examines how three women with very public lives grappled with the ideology of their separate spheres in an era of immense political and social upheaval. Angelina Grimke (1805-79), daughter of a Southern slaveholding family, defied her family to become the public voice of abolitionism during the 1830s, but retired from public life after her marriage to antislavery orator Theodore Weld. Varina Howell Davis (1826-1906), wife of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, struggled to meet her husband's expectations for a dutiful wife, but later drew on her independent spirit to survive defeat and disgrace. Meanwhile, Julia Dent Grant (1826-1902), wife of General and President Ulysses S. Grant, cheerfully embraced her role as wife and mother, striving to enhance her husband's life and legacy. Drawing primarily on memoirs and letters, Berkin (history, Baruch Coll. & CUNY Graduate Ctr.; Revolutionary Mothers) succeeds in presenting the unique personality of each woman along with the momentous challenges each faced socially and personally. There are other works about these women separately, such as Joan E. Cashin's First Lady of the Confederacy, and Gerda Lerner's classic, The Grimke Sisters from South Carolina, while Ishbel Ross's The General's Wife, written 50 years ago, is no longer in print. VERDICT Undergraduates will find Berkin's book a succinct source of reliable, scholarly information while general readers will enjoy the engaging stories.-Linda V. Carlisle, Ph.D., Southern Illinois Univ., Edwardsville (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

The wives of abolitionist Theodore Dwight Weld, Confederacy president Jefferson Davis and Union commander Ulysses S. Grant don't fit comfortably between one book's covers. Though they lived during roughly the same period, they differed in disposition, situation aspiration and gifts. But Baruch College and CUNY Graduate Center historian Berkin (Revolutionary Mothers) isn't out to create a group portrait. Instead, she wants to catch the realities of three "privileged, yet restricted" women and thus to reveal how even the most fortunate of wives-at least fortunate in the importance and celebrity of their husbands-struggled, not always successfully, to face down the difficulties of their sex. In this, Berkin is entirely successful. Her engaging prose and sympathetic posture bring the three women vividly to life. Weld, Davis and Grant were unrepresentative in their marriages but typical in their struggles to use their sharp minds to break free of the era's restrictions on married women. Even if they weren't, contrary to Berkin's hackneyed word, "heroes," they pointed the way to what women's lives might-and eventually did-become. 6 photos. (Sept. 9) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

CHOICE Review

Berkin (CUNY Graduate Center), a senior scholar who has published works on 18th-century women, now turns her hand to the Civil War era, writing parallel biographical sketches of Angelina Grimke Weld, Varina Howell Davis, and Julia Dent Grant. She uses these women, selected because they left extensive personal writings, to demonstrate how the dominant culture's expectations for women (separate spheres, true womanhood) intersected with their individual personalities, talents, and family circumstances, inevitably shaping how they saw themselves, their families, their husband's careers, and the events of the Civil War era. Although all three women were raised in slave states, enjoyed economic advantages, and understood societal expectations for women, they had remarkable differences as well as similarities, growing and changing over their lifetimes and carving out new understandings of self due to the challenges they encountered. These prominent women's stories have been told many times before. Berkin's contribution is not to reveal any new details, but to highlight how cultural values begin to change, one individual at a time. This work is aimed at a broad, educated audience. Summing Up: Recommended. Public and undergraduate libraries. P. F. Field emerita, Ohio University

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Professor Berkin, writing in a lively style, approaches the Civil War era from a feminist perspective, focusing on three women who married powerful men. In the reactions of the three to married life, Berkin finds not only a paradigm for the lives of privileged white women in the mid-1800s but also evidence of the second-class status of all women at the time. Angelina Grimke Weld was born into Charleston slave-holding gentry, but she grew to deplore enforced servitude and became a noted abolitionist speaker; her voice, however, was eventually overshadowed by the man she married, also a famous abolitionist speaker. Varina Howell Davis was the one and only First Lady of the Confederacy, but her difficutlties in that position, and in her married life with the buttoned-down Jefferson Davis, stemmed simply from her being too smart, too independent of mind, for what was considered appropriate for the era's distaff side. On the other hand, Julia Dent Grant, consort of general and president Ulysses Grant, was a model of genteel domesticity and a reminder of the rewards of the unexamined life. This finely nuanced, absorbing account makes an important contribution to both Civil War literature and the history of American women.--Hooper, Brad Copyright 2009 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

Biography of three important women from the Civil War era. The author of multiple books about women in colonial America, Berkin (History/Baruch Coll.; Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America's Independence, 2005, etc.) jumps ahead to the Civil War to investigate how these women's marriages to prominent men shaped their lives. Angelina Grimk Weld, who married abolitionist agitator Theodore Weld, was an outspoken proponent of abolition, racial equality and women's rights; Varina Howell Davis had a sharp mind and an independent streak that helped her fight for the freedom of her husband, Confederate President Jefferson Davis, after his postwar imprisonment; Julia Dent Grant found contentment in her domestic role as wife to Ulysses S. Grant and mother to four children. Any one of these women would make for an engaging biography, but Berkin uses their storiesreconstructed from their letters, diaries and speechesto serve a larger theme: the female experience in the late 1800s. It often meant sublimation and compromise. Though Angelina Weld was an early star in the abolitionist movement, she submitted to quiet domesticity after her marriage. Varina Davis was often criticized by her husband for her lack of passivity, even though he said he treasured her "fine mind." Julia Grant so fully embraced the ideal of domestic life that she only found her voice, as a memoirist, in the last few years of her life. Indeed, as Berkin emphasizes in this probing sociological portrait, all three women "had access to the seats of power but no power themselves." Berkin once again provides a fresh perspective on women in American history. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.