The Effects of the Civil War on the Marriage of Southern Women

One of the interesting facts that I recently came into consideration on was the fact that in the aftermath of the Civil War, former slaves were not the only ones affected by the changes that would soon come from the repercussions of the war. This is the fact that women were also affected in regards to the fact that as many as 92% of southern women were forced into spinsterhood, as there was not enough southern men in order for them to marry

According to J. David Hacker, “If it is true that the war condemned a generation of southern women to spinsterhood, then demography, specifically the imbalance in the number of men and women, contributed to what some historians have described as a war-provoked "crisis in gender (p. 40).” This brings a key point the era of Reconstruction as I feel that even though many historians call for more research during this period, it is usually a topic that gets brushed to the wayside for meatier topics such as the “Redemption of the South”.

Hacker brings up the point of saying that “The vast majority (approximately 92 percent) of southern white women who came of marriage age during the war married at some point in their lives. Indeed, the marriage squeeze on southern women apparent in the 1870 census is no longer evident in the 1880 census (p. 42).” I feel that after the era of Reconstruction, the crisis seems to be averted. But however one has to look at the standpoint of the economic, demographic, and cultural contexts of marriage patterns in the 19^th century of the United States history. The things with marriage in this time was that young couples were expected to be able to have enough financial backing to properly provide for themselves, particularly to have enough money in order to secure farm land, the equipment needed to run the farm, and homes to thrive in the on the land they acquired. Hacker goes on to say that, “As a result, marriages occurred several years earlier, on average, in colonial America than in Europe, and much higher proportions of the population eventually married (p. 42).”  He also brings up the point that it marriage also depended on the presence of desirable alternatives to marriage, going on to say that 20^th century scholars have seen that women in that day were more likely to postpone marriage to have greater opportunities for education and to join the paid labor force.

 Hacker brings up another interesting point regarding the cultural expectation and appropriate age differences between men and women during this time.  “Although this difference suggests that many young women would be forced to delay marriage or remain permanently single, the greater tendency for men to remarry after widowhood ensured that most women in the nineteenth century eventually married (p. 44).” At the outbreak of the Civil War with the bombing of Fort Sumter on April 12^th 1861, this caused many men of appropriate marriage age to be shipped out to fight a war.

I feel that they fact that the war eventually broke and caused many men to die for a “noble cause” severely hindered the growth of the Southern population after the war. The fact this notion would add to the white southerners paranoia that former slaves wanted nothing better than to inter marry with the white women of the south who many would consider to be “vulnerable and threatened” by a large group of men who were essentially free from the bounds of slavery.

Hacker, J. D., Libra Hilde, and James H. Jones. "The Effects of the Civil War on Southern Marriage Patterns." The Journal of Southern History 76.1 (2010): 40-45. Web. 1 May 2013.