Grieving for a nation: from wife to widow in the Confederate south

Approximately 250,000 Confederate soldiers died in the American Civil War, creating thousands of widows. And yet, the stories, experiences, and impact of these women remains largely absent from the historical narrative. This thesis focuses upon the immediate effects of widowhood as an emotional experience, with an emphasis on the two and a half year mourning period. War widows had a tremendous amount of social capital and the Confederacy was anxious to oversee how they spent it. Etiquette books, condolence letters, literature, and other elements of southern society prescribed a specific type of mourning for war widows. Mourning prescriptions may have been uniform, but widows were not. The war created widows in higher numbers, younger ages, and of all social classes. This thesis focuses on the emotional, human experience of losing a husband and how that emotional experience was channeled, contained, and, sometimes, reinvested in the Confederacy.