New and Notable---Northern Women, Factory Production, and Battlefield Victory

Army at Home: Women and the Civil War on the Northern Home Front , Judith Giesberg, 256 pages, The University of North Carolina Press, $35.00.

Introducing readers to women whose Civil War experiences have long been ignored, Judith Giesberg examines the lives of working-class women in the North, for whom home front was a battlefield of its own.

Black and white working-class women managed farms that had been left without a male head of household, worked in munitions factories, made uniforms, and located and cared for injured or dead soldiers. As they became more active in their new roles, they became visible as political actors, writing letters, signing petitions, moving (or refusing to move) from their homes, and confronting civilian and military officials.

At the heart of the book are stories of women who fought the draft in New York and Pennsylvania, protested segregated streetcars in San Francisco and Philadelphia, and demanded a living wage in the needle trades and safer conditions at the Federal arsenals where they labored. Giesberg challenges readers to think about women and children who were caught up in the military conflict but nonetheless refused to become its collateral damage. She offers a dramatic reinterpretation of how America’s Civil War reshaped the lived experience of race and gender and brought swift and lasting changes to working-class family life.

Giesberg examines the lives of working-class women in the North, where black and white working-class women managed farms that had been left without a male head of household, worked in munitions factories, made uniforms, and located and cared for injured or dead soldiers. As they became more active in their new roles, they became visible as political actors, writing letters, signing petitions, moving (or refusing to move) from their homes, and confronting civilian and military officials. Giesberg provides a dramatic reinterpretation of how America’s Civil War reshaped the lived experience of race and gender and brought swift and lasting changes to working-class family life.

Victoria Bynum, author of The Free State of Jones: Mississippi's Longest Civil War"In Giesberg's action-packed Civil War study, women risk body and soul to make a living and to protest segregation, conscription, and low wages. These are not teary-eyed maidens waiting out the war with hankies gripped to their throats; they embody home front struggles that paralleled battlefields in transforming U.S. society."

J. Matthew Gallman, author of America's Joan of Arc: The Life of Anna Elizabeth Dickinson "A highly original analysis of how the war affected working-class women and how those women affected the war effort in heretofore underrecognized ways, Army at Home is also a very valuable case study in how to apply larger theoretical insights to the Civil War era."

Text and Image Source: Amazon.com

Reviews Source: University of North Carolina Press

CWL---New: Lincoln's Labels---Best Known Brands of the Civil War is Essential for Reenactors and Living Historians

Lincoln's Labels: America's Best Know Brands During the Civil War, James M. Schmidt, Edinborough Press, 208 pp., 19 illustrations, index, sources, notes, 2009, $27.95

In this bicentennial year of Lincoln's birth readers are deluged with Lincoln books. James Schimdt has written one for the subscribers of Civil War Historian and Citizens' Companion magazines, who will enjoy and keep handy Lincoln's Labels as a ready reference. Members of Authenitic Campaigner will sit back and relax with this overview which explores the brand names that during the Civil War supplied food, medicine, clothing, and weapons. Civil War era soldiers and civilians used Du Pont’s gunpowder, Brooks Brothers’ uniforms, Procter & Gamble’s soap and Borden’s condensed milk.

James M. Schmidt relates a variety of rarely told stories of inventions, marketing and quartermaster purchasing. Linoln's Labels touches upon how each firm mirrors the war and how family and friendships were torn asunder, as well as how politicans and merchants conspired and crossed paths with Abraham Lincoln. Soldiers and civilians are also the focus of this book. In Chapter Five, Fire and Brimstone, the author begins the chapter on July 3 1863 on Culp's Hill with Henry J. Hunt, chief of artillery, inspecting federal artillery ammunition supplies. In Chapter Six, Medicine Man, Schmidt has uncovered and presents a truely harrowing first person account of an 11th Illinois soldier wounded in February 1862 in Tennessee.

CWL will keep his copy close by and also assign the library's copy to business majors who are CWL's U.S. history survey class. Schmidt's narrative is also accessible to an avanced placement high school audience also.

James M. Schmidt is the Civil War Medicine columnist for Civil War News and has a web log at http://civilwarmed.blogspot.com is the author of more than 50 articles on American history. He has been featured in Chemical Heritage, Learning through History, North & South and World War II magazines . He lives near Houston, Texas.