Women Making War

The situation in Missouri before and during the Civil War was tumultuous. Although the state remained in the Union by force, a sizable portion of the residents favored the Confederacy. These men joined the Confederate army, and their womenfolk did their best to support the Southern cause, including by communicating with their rebel husbands and other relatives in spite of prohibitions against doing so, clandestinely transporting mail between Union and Confederate areas, smuggling supplies, hiding and otherwise aiding guerillas, spying, sabotage, joining the Southern army in disguise, and speaking out against the Union leadership and military. Because of these activities, at least 440 women were arrested in St. Louis or brought to the area from elsewhere in Missouri, Arkansas, and Tennessee over the course of the war.In Women Making War: Female Confederate Prisoners and Union Military Justice, Thomas F. Curran seeks to provide an extensive examination of the repercussions suffered by these disloyal women. Because of the disordered state of Missouri and the fear of potential Southern invasion of the state, the Union military officers were quick to arrest both men and women suspected of aiding the South. However, throughout the war, it appears that most of the Union officials in Missouri did their best to examine the accusations carefully, to determine those who were actually guilty, to pronounce punishments that fit the crimes, and to free those against whom there was no conclusive evidence.Over the years since the war, memoirists, journalists, and historians have played down the roles of disloyal women. Some have claimed that women were not arrested, others that they were not imprisoned. In cases where women were banished to the deep South or far North, it was allegedly due to the malevolence of the Yankees toward “innocent” women.Yet, fragmentary as the paperwork may be in many cases, the records of the provost marshals and the military prisons, located at the National Archives, as well as military correspondence, newspaper accounts, and papers of persons involved in or observing the activities, demonstrate the involvement of these women and their punishment.Curran arranges his material in chronological yet often topical fashion to show the increasing frequency and seriousness of the women's punishments. Although women in other parts of the country also engaged in disloyal practices and received punishment, Curran mentions such incidents only occasionally and in passing, concentrating on the greater St. Louis and Missouri area.Initially, before about May 1862, few rebel women were arrested. Most were ordered to take the oath of allegiance and then permitted to go home. Only those who refused were banished from the department, usually to the Confederacy. Some women were imprisoned until they could be sent South, while some, accused of more serious offenses, were sentenced to prison for a year or until the end of the war. In general, women's punishments were less harsh than men's but became harsher as the war progressed.At first there were no prisons for women, but accommodations were made as needed, sometimes of better quality than others. Early in the war, women prisoners were confined in St. Louis at the homes of Margaret McLure (one of the prisoners) and Edward Dobyns (a Confederate sympathizer). More of them were kept at the Gratiot St. Prison (two successive buildings), the Myrtle Street Prison (a former slave pen), and the St. Charles Street Female Prison. Beginning in 1863, the most serious cases with the lengthiest terms were confined across the Mississippi River at the Alton Military Prison, the former Illinois State Penitentiary. Curran gives as much information as is known about nature of the various prison facilities, as well as numerous examples of cases of women who were sent to each prison. In some instances, children were confined with their mothers.After the war, some of the disloyal females continued to cause problems, but many more became respectable citizens. Curran traces a number of them and also explains what happened to the buildings that had been used as prisons. Nothing currently remains of any of those structures except some stones from the Alton prison, used as part of a monument to the former prisoners, constructed a few blocks away from the actual prison site.Curran ends with a historiographical chapter discussing how and why both historians and novelists over time have misinterpreted the sources concerning the role of women in the area during the war. He suggests that, among other trends, at least part of it had to do with the “Lost Cause” interpretation of the war. This tended to downplay any activity of women beyond nurturing their families and the soldiers, so that the men did all the fighting to protect their women, and got all the glory.Thomas F. Curran has filled gaps in Civil War history, women's history, Missouri history, and Illinois history with this very helpful book

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