The Weaker Sex in War: Gender and Nationalism in Civil War Virginia

In this important and original work, Kristen Brill shows how white women's wartime experiences shaped Confederate political culture as women functioned as both actors for and symbols of Southern nationalism. Through their performance of patriotic devotion, middle- and planter-class women helped make gender central to the formation of Confederate national identity. A signal contribution to an increasingly rich vein of historiography, The Weaker Sex in War provides a definitive take on white women and political culture in the would-be Confederate state.