Busy Hands : : Images of the Family in the Northern Civil War Effort / / Patricia Richard.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Fordham University Press Complete eBook-Package Pre-2014
• VerfasserIn: Richard, Patricia,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : Fordham University Press, , [2022]; ©2004
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Series: The North's Civil War
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (335 p.)

Focusing on middle-class women’s contributions to the northern Civil War effort, Patricia Richard shows how women utilized their power as moral agents to shape the way men survived the ravages of war. Busy Hands investigates the ways in which white and African American women used images of family and domestic life in their relief efforts to counter the effects of prostitution, gambling, profanity, and drinking, threatening men’s postwar civilian fitness. Drawing on letters, diaries, and memoirs of Civil War nurses, sanitary workers, soldiers, and the soldiers’ aid societies, Richard develops a new perspective on domestic influence on the war, as women sought to save soldiers from the dangers of the military world.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- ABBREVIATIONS -- INTRODUCTION -- 1. The Moral Source: The Family During the Civil War -- 2. Corruption Abounds: Reactions to the Soldier's Life -- 3. "In a Most Tangible Form": Northern Women Respond to the Nurturing Needs of the Civil War Soldier -- 4. "Listen Ladies One and All": Soldiers Search for the Comforts of Home Through Correspondence Ads -- 5. The Communal Contract: Northern Women Care for the Union Family Through Aid Societies -- 6. "The Kind Attentions of Woman": Female Nurses Bring Home to the Hospital -- 7 The Soldiers' Home and the Journey Homeward -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX