Confederate Criticism of Northern Women during the 1863 Pennsylvania Campaign
Over the last few weeks I’ve listened to the audio book At the Forefront of Lee’s Invasion by Robert J. Wynstra on my longer drives. I’ve enjoyed all the primary source accounts and the soldier perspectives from the Confederate Second Crops. One thing that’s really standing out to me is the negative comments that Confederate soldiers had about Maryland and Pennsylvania women. Occasionally, they give a reason for their dislike, but most of the time it seems like kind-of random comments about how ugly the women are. Which is not a particularly nice thing to say, but when it’s a consistent theme in common soldiers’ writing it raises the question: why are they saying this?
(Union soldiers call Southern women plain, ugly, or unattractive, too. Maybe one of these days I’ll write a full-cited post about this and look at both sides.)
Finally, I had to pause the audiobook and give this some thought. It didn’t upset me, but it puzzled me. Why seemingly random comments about “ugly women”? Here are a few ideas that I pondered:
- Well, maybe the women actually were unattractive/ugly? This possibility looms rather unlikely, but should be mentioned. However, because the Confederate soldier criticism is wide-spread, it seems doubtful that every woman was actually unattractive.
- Different preferences of beauty? Some of the critical Confederates did compare these northern women to southern women, noting physical differences. The Pennsylvania women tended to taller, broader, more stout or at least more full-figured than the “ideal little Southern woman” that the Confederate critics praised. Perhaps the adjectives came from difference cultural preferences or ideals when it came to female appearance and “beauty.”
- Is it actually ethnic criticism? Many of the comments about ugliness include references to “Dutch women” which was 19th Century slang for German-American. Could there be some vestiges of Anglo-Saxon preference or political Know-Nothingism influencing the remarks about the northern women? In several quoted passage in the book, soldiers actually ranked appearance and intelligence of the “Dutch” farmers and the women below enslaved African Americans, strongly suggesting that there was a racial and/or ethnic component to at least some of the criticism.
- Is the Confederate soldier feeling threatened? Some of the invading soldiers noted that some women of all ages gave angry replies or attempted to verbally intimidate the Confederate soldiers as they stole (or bought with Confederate money) supplies and food. Could it have been an uncomfortable and conscience-pricking experience with an “outspoken” woman that prompted the soldier to respond with a complaint “she’s ugly”? In the modern era, it has been reported that when some men feel threatened they will often respond with a criticism of a woman’s appearance. Could the same thing have been happening in 1863?
- Is it a written tactic to reassure the homefront? Many of the “ugly Northern women” comments are found in letters to wives, sweethearts, or other female family members. Could it be a way that soldiers were intentionally trying to overly assure their relatives that there was no temptation to an affair or be unfaithful to their marriage?
I’m sure there could be other reasons that soldiers wrote about “ugly women,” but these were the five that I thought of rather quickly. Probably each critical soldier had his own reasons or combination of reasons. I suspect much of it was cultural differences and an exaggerated protest about how awful things were in the North, including the beauty and speech of the women.
However, the side of my brain that loves irony wonders how wounded Confederate soldiers left behind after the battle of Gettysburg thought about the “Pennsylvania-Dutch” women who cared for them? Did the “ugly women” suddenly become “angels of mercy”?
There is a possibility that the soldiers were not referring to physical appearance, but to the women’s attitudes towards the soldiers. My husband’s grandmother from North Carolina would use the word ‘ugly’ in this way (stop being ugly, that’s an ugly thing to say, she has an ugly attitude, etc.).
Excellent point!
A relevant and amusing incident (“the Dutch woman’s ankles”) is reported by Robert Stiles in his book “Four Years Under Marse Robert”. 1903, NY pages 220-21
Correction! publication place Washington D.C. vice NY
Sounds like typical bravado. Dehumanizing an enemy is as old as warfare itself. Today we might call it a certain kind of “locker room talk”. I imagine the women on each side were often not impressed with the appearance of the opposition’s soldiers. Being in the field for long stretches of time, often unable to bathe, uniforms (especially on the Confederate side) becoming torn and frayed, the accompanying smells and odors, etc., I’m sure there are a lot of observations by the women that are not flattering.
These comments were replicated by Union soldiers regarding Confederate women, especially the angry barbs from Confederates, with those from the women being the worse.
Its almost counter-intuitive. Soldiers long in camp or at war usually find any woman instantly attractive. During my time in the Iraq war, American females were rare. Perhaps 20% of soldiers were female? The joke told – more or less – was that a woman who was a 5 back home would be a 10 after a few weeks in the war zone. Not a nice thing to say, but some said it. I can only guess that pre-Civil War, the inter-sectional rivalry was very strong. I have been reading through a couple of New Orleans newspapers from 1849 on – I am up to 1856 now. There was a constant drum beat about how the North hates us, how they do not understand slavery, how the “black” Republicans/Whigs (meaning evil, not color of skin) did this or did that in far away places like New York or Pennsylvania. The defensiveness is palpable, even in newspapers published and edited by relatively recent immigrants to the U.S. Perhaps every couple of days, there is some mention of the “black” – meaning evil, not color – Northerners saying this or doing that. They must have sold a lot of newspapers with those sorts of articles.
Tom
Soldiers write home south, to their wives and girlfriends, that the women they are seeing can’t hold a candle to the girls back home, whom they are writing to? Gosh, its a mystery
I am finishing the two volume series by Scott Mingus and Eric Wittenberg on the movement of the armies to Gettysburg(If We Are Striking For Pennsylvania). The authors include many writings of similar import, demeaning the women. But the letters home extolled the beauty of the Maryland Pennsylvania countryside, the magnificence of the barns, the robust crops, and well built homes.
How is it that the Confederates taking food from civilians in the North is termed “stealing” when U.S. soldiers doing the same thing in the South are said to be “foraging”?
Beauty is in the eye of the Beholder!
And double standards should be obvious to the eye of the historian.