when florida “Opened up the gates of hell” - Florida Humanities ...

father, brother, son, husband, or lover.
Slave and free black women were also
affected, as families had been separated
and sold apart during the conflict.
Simply finding loved ones was the
beginning of a reconstruction of lives.
Across the state, the women
returned to work to support their
families rather than the Confederate
cause. In St. Augustine, widows made
palmetto trinkets to sell to Yankee
tourists. In Jacksonville, both black
and white women became laundresses.
Margaret Fleming turned her plantation
home of Hibernia into a boarding
house, and in Tallahassee Ellen Call
Long, daughter of a territorial governor,
sold off family heirlooms to provide
for her children. Julia Stockton’s
husband returned home, and the couple
conceived another child, but William’s
health was broken and he died in 1867,
leaving behind a large family and larger
debts. Like many other women, Julia
Stockton felt her future was uncertain.
Florida’s women had many
different reactions to the Civil War,
30 F O R U M F L O R I D A H U M A N I T I E S C O U N C I L
Join the Conversation in 2010
www.eckerd.edu/africa
Elie Wiesel Dave Eggers John Prendergast Nicholas Kristof Betty Bigombe Valentino Achak Deng
Ladysmith Black Mambazo Anita Shreve Immaculée Ilibagiza Jerry Fowler Edward Kissi Jerald Walker
Congo/Women Portraits of War: The Democratic Republic of Congo and Darfur/Darfur Photo Exhibits
Dundu Dole Urban African Ballet Florida Memorial University Ambassador Chorale Guest Faculty
Eckerd Faculty, Students and Alumni Dialogue Lectures Film Music Dance Creative Writing Art
Eckerd College invites you to join a yearlong
effort to raise Africa’s profile through academic
study, activism and community consciousness.
and a vast variety of experiences
during it. Some bravely faced enemy
guns, while others fled and became
miserable refugees. Some theatrically
spat defiance at Yankees as their
female neighbors quietly welcomed
Federals into their homes. Most
women remained focused on what they
considered to be their real country—
their loved ones and family members.
At war’s end, Florida’s women
endured their hardships with fortitude
and even pluck. One slave woman,
supposedly crippled for years, abruptly
threw away her crutches and walked off
the plantation. Other women tossed off
the Victorian conventions that limited
what they could do and say, taking
up careers and eventually celebrating
their own wartime accomplishments in
letters and articles. One plantation girl
finally took pride in having learned to
cook. While nothing erased the tragedy
of 600,000 American lives lost, the war
opened doors that many Florida women
had never realized were closed.
In 1926, Mrs.
L.W. Jackson wrote
“we can but regret
that the pages of
History hold so little
of the dual lives of the
Mothers, Sisters, wives
and sweet-hearts of
those strenuous days
filled as they were with
work, hope, fear, and
anxiety.” Today we
can remember Susan
Bradford Eppes, the plantation belle, but we
can also remember Julia Stockton, Clarissa
Anderson, Susan Brown, and all of Florida’s
long-ignored Civil War women.
TRACY J. REVELS, professor and chair of
the Department of History at Wofford College,
Spartanburg, S.C., is the author of Grander in Her
Daughters: Florida’s Women during the Civil War.
Photo by Bradley Ennis ’10, Eckerd College
Volta Region, Ghana, West Africa
4200 54th Avenue South St. Petersburg, Florida 33711
www.eckerd.edu 727.864.7979
Photo: Florida State Archives
A photograph taken in the 1800s
of Mrs. David Dunham and her
children, of Palatka.
Connect to more
To listen to or download an interview with author
Tracy Revels, visit FORUM EXTRA! at
www.flahum.org