Tara Revisited

Tara Revisited: Women, War, & the Plantation Legend examines the daily life of Confederate women and finds it considerably grimmer than the version of it supplied by myth-makers nostalgic for a past that never was. Clinton's last pages offer a penetrating summary of the reasons for the myth's durable appeal. - New Yorker, on cover flap. This captivating volume cuts through romantic myth, combining period photographs and illustrations with new documentary sources to tell the real story of Southern women during the Civil War. Drawing from a wealth of poignant letters, diaries, slave narratives, and other accounts, Catherine Clinton provides a vivid social and cultural history of the diverse communities of Southern women during the Civil War: the heroic African-American women who struggled for freedom, the tireless nurses who faced gruesome duties, the intriguing handful who donned uniforms, and those brave women who spied and even died for the Confederacy. Photographs, drawings, prints, and other period illustrations bring this buried chapter of Civil War history to life, taking the reader from the cotton fields to the hearthsides, from shrapnel-riddled mansions to slave cabins. Clin