WOMEN'S RADICAL RECONSTRUCTION by Carol Faulkner ( 9780812219708 )

Item Details

Title:

WOMEN'S RADICAL RECONSTRUCTION
THE FREEDMEN'S AID MOVEMENT

By:

Format:

Paperback

List price:	£23.99
We currently do not stock this item, please contact the publisher directly for further information.

ISBN 10:

0812219708

ISBN 13:

9780812219708

Publisher:

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS

Pub. date:

8 January, 2007

Pages:

208

Description:

Carol Faulkner offers a vivid social history of the way the women's radical reform movement shaped government policy toward former slaves in the Civil War and Reconstruction era.

Synopsis:

In this first critical study of female abolitionists and feminists in the freedmen's aid movement, Carol Faulkner describes these women's radical view of former slaves and the nation's responsibility to them. Moving beyond the image of the Yankee schoolmarm, Women's Radical Reconstruction demonstrates fully the complex and dynamic part played by Northern women in the design, implementation, and administration of Reconstruction policy. This absorbing account illustrates how these activists approached women's rights, the treatment of freed slaves, and the federal government's role in reorganizing Southern life.Like Radical Republicans, black and white women studied here advocated land reform, political and civil rights, and an activist federal government. They worked closely with the military, the Freedmen's Bureau, and Northern aid societies to provide food, clothes, housing, education, and employment to former slaves. These abolitionist-feminists embraced the Freedmen's Bureau, seeing it as both a shield for freedpeople and a vehicle for women's rights. But Faulkner rebuts historians who depict a community united by faith in free labor ideology, describing a movement torn by internal tensions. The author explores how gender conventions undermined women's efforts, as military personnel and many male reformers saw female reformers as encroaching on their territory, threatening their vision of a wage labor economy, and impeding the economic independence of former slaves. She notes the opportunities afforded to some middle-class black women, while also acknowledging the difficult ground they occupied between freed slaves and whites. Through compelling individual examples, she traces how female reformers found their commitment to gender solidarity across racial lines tested in the face of disagreements regarding the benefits of charity and the merits of paid employment.

Illustrations:

6 illus.

Publication:

Imprint:

University of Pennsylvania Press

Returns:

Returnable

Some other items by this author:

A LIFE SPENT CHANGING PLACES (HB)

ACROSS THE OPEN FIELD

ACROSS THE OPEN FIELD (HB)

ADDISON MIZNER (HB)