The Civil War is often referred to as the last war fought on American soil. Since then, we fight wars over seas and we watch the battles play out on TV or the Internet. For black and white women living in the American South, the Civil War was fought all around them, but the true enemies were poverty, hunger and despair. For those women, the battlefront was not a distant idea because the battlefront was the homefront. As part of our series, “North Carolina Voices: The Civil War,” Thavolia Glymph and Laura Edwards join host Frank Stasio to discuss what life was like for women in North Carolina during the war.
Glymph is an associate professor of African and African American Studies and History at Duke University and she is the author of the book, “Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household.” (Cambridge University Press/2008). Laura Edwards is a professor of History at Duke University and author of the books, “The People and Their Peace: Legal Culture and the Transformation of Inequality in the Post-Revolutionary South” (University of North Carolina Press/2009) and “Scarlett Doesn't Live Here Anymore: Southern Women in the Civil War Era” (University of Illinois Press/2000).