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First published by the University of South Carolina in 1952, Ersatz
in the Confederacy remains the definitive study of the South's
desperate struggle to overcome critical shortages of food,
medicine, clothing, household goods, farming supplies, and tools
during the Civil War. Mary Elizabeth Massey's seminal work
carefully documents the ingenuity of the Confederates as they coped
with shortages of manufactured goods and essential
commodities--including grain, coffee, sugar, and butter--that
previously had been imported from the northern states or from
England. Creative Southerners substituted sawdust for soap, pigs'
tails and ears for Christmas tree ornaments, leaves for mattress
stuffing, okra seeds for coffee beans, and gourds for cups. Women
made clothing from scraps of material, blankets from carpets, shoes
from leather saddles and furniture, and battle flags from wedding
dresses. Despite the Confederates' penchant for "making do" and
"doing without," Massey's research reveals the devastating impact
of war's shortages on the South's civilian population. Overly
optimistic that they could easily transform a rural economy into a
self-sufficient manufacturing power, Southerners suffered from both
disappointment and hardship as it became clear that their
expectations were unrealistic. Ersatz in the Confederacy's lasting
significance lies in Masseys clearly documented conclusion that
despite the resourcefulness of the Southern people, the Confederate
cause was lost not at Gettysburg nor in any other military
engagement but much earlier and more decisively in the homefront
battle against scarcity and deprivation.
The Civil War wrought cataclysmic changes in the lives of American
Women on both sides of the conflict. "Women in the Civil War"
demonstrates their enterprise, fortitude, and fierceness. In this
revealing social history, Massey focuses on many famous women,
including nurses Dorothea Dix, Clara Barton, and Mother Bickerdyke;
spies Pauline Cushman and Belle Boyd; writers Louisa May Alcott,
Julia Ward Howe, and Mary Chestnut; pamphleteer and military
strategist Anna Ella Carroll; black abolitionists Harriet Tubman
and Sojourner Truth; feminists Susan B. Anthony and Jane Grey
Swisshelm; and political wives Varina Davis and Mary Todd Lincoln.
The anonymous women who maintained farms and plantations are
described, as are camp followers, businesswomen, entertainers,
activists, and socialites in Charleston and Washington.
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