>> good afternoon, everyone. joining uso much for for the american civil war symposium. ordinary people, extraordinary times. --t up on our roster

where she received the 2016 great teacher award. she taught previously at the state of -- at the university of new york in the state of albany. she received her phd studying under dr. -- and dr. gallagher. dr. taylor is a member of the board of editors of the journal of southern history and advisor editor for the civil war monitor magazine and coeditor of the university of georgia press is on civil war series. her current book project -- of the manyy thousands of men and women and

children who fled slavery during the civil war and examined how their day to day experiences shaped the way emancipation unfolded in the united states. book derived from her dissertation provided family in the civil war. in 2005.published that book is the topic of her program today. i present to you dr. amy morel taylor. >> it is indeed a real pleasure to be back here in virginia, where much of my research and interest in this history was ignited. i want to start today with this image.

i think i'm not the only one out takes a specific book, a specific moment, a teacher, may be a story that first ignited our interest in this history. booke part of me was this that part of my interest was this book. in 1887.blished a pectoral book of anecdotes and incidents. it looked old, therefore looked kind of cool on the shelf. occasionally i would find myself in moments of boredom, picking it up. and starting to look at some stories that were contained in this ready thick volume. stories of the unusual, stories of the outlandish.

i had sort of been raised to assume the civil war was not funny. my eye was drawn in particular to headlines like love and treason. that rebel is my brother. stories of divided families. families that could not work for their political differences. families in which brother sometimes guns and turned around and killed one another in the process. husbands andhich wives found themselves arguing over slavery and secession and union. me that i part of would assume these stories were really made up because they are dramatic and eye-catching.

they couldn't be true, right to? .hey make a good story there are a number of authors out there who have made these stories are integrated them. wrong, and that's what i learn in the years i followed the discovery this book. and began looking more deeply into the lives of civil war families. they existed and surprising numbers. their stories were every bit as dramatic as they described in a book like this. i'm going to tell you about some most of families and all about the struggle that was so elemental in this war. i think we often have the came.tion that war they stuck with that side and was pretty clear-cut.

these families show us how wartime allegiances can be quite conflicting, quite agonizing. they could change over time. the civil warof up your far less clear-cut than their stories. this is health misery newspaper put it in 1861. there is scarcely it -- scarcely a family that is not divided. he wrote that there are thousands of families in the same situation. out, is noit turns exaggeration and low balls the total number. in states and the upper south and border region, states like missouri and tennessee, kentucky and maryland, delaware, and right here in virginia. this is where the civil war most often hits families.

this is also the region where we see members of statehouses against one another. region as one kentuckian put it, where treason and loyalty overlaps. it's the region where mary todd lincoln came from, from kentucky, from lexington. kentuckian herhe found herself facing half sibling on the confederate side. stonewall jackson found himself pretty painfully divided from his sister. those are two of the best-known cases but this is the phenomenon that affected the ordinary in keeping with our team today. i think it's important to point out that this is a phenomenon deeply connected in many ways.

this is something that white families experienced. lee talked about the hardships of african-american families, the way they were torn apart in different families. did,s what white families african americans of course were pretty unified around the union. this existence of whites divided families is all the more when one considers how these americans in the middle of the 19th century. cherished about family. constant, onene belief shared by americans north and south, east and west, it is that family life was to be private. occupy life --

what they consider to be public life. family was to be a protected space. increasingly considering a heartless competitive public world. this is especially important to the civil war generation as they had lived through some pretty wrenching change already. the united states was increasingly no longer a land of independent farmers, but a place where factories are being established. a place where cities were markets,p around those where immigrants were coming to populate those cities, and where railroads and canals and steamboats were allowing immigrants to raise rates all across the land. -- panic came and went . a war with mexico in the 1840's.

throughout the wrenching change, the family was idealized. it was supposed to remain that way during the civil war. at least that's what brutus clay's -- brutus clay thought. , you mayclay immediately think of henry clay. brutus had a brother named cassius. named brutus and cassius. i don't have to explain. cassius was an outspoken abolitionist at the time. a member of the kentucky state house -- brutus was a member of the kentucky state house. the civil war was about saving the united states from ruin.

owner.clay was a slave he owned 100 men, women, and children. he believed slavery was best protected in the union. he felt this was so obvious and self evidence that he couldn't even imagine why some kentuckians would consider -- orng or watering wanting their state to secede. son beganwn expressing some secessionist 1860's he had begun attending pro-secession rallies. in time he to, despite being the

son of the unionist father, began talking like a diehard sympathizer. a dilemma on her hands, we might say. it was and who tended to be home toh zeke, watching over metric matters while brutus was away at the state capital. the first one to figure out that father and son may seem to be heading down these divergent paths. what should she do? should she tell brutus what is going on? that would undoubtedly infuriate him. she wanted to avoid that as much as she could. she even believed to zeke in the first place. she knew zeke was a bit of a hothead. she thought this was useful

acting out. maybe when over time things will settle down. she kept quiet. the war changed and seek did not settle down. one day she came upon him on her living room where she was on the charges -- gun cartridges. he merely said i'm just making these for my father. he told and he was going loon hunting. that's not what he was doing. that evening off and left behind this note.

i leave for the army tonight. i beg forgiveness. goodbye to you all. it says you will hear from me soon. that's the kind of note i would leave for my parents. and clay was infuriated come it was bad enough he had gone off to join the confederacy. he had to fight his father. brutus, upon hearing the news, and i will use the note to stand heard thee, when he

news he didn't stop to fume or to write a response. he simply announced he would immediately disinherit seek. he wrote back and said can i keep my wristwatch? he had his priorities. zeke'sy's reaction to partner was -- others were quick to see their sons departures. just like another coming-of-age struggle on a young man's road to adulthood. that is the most common pattern. you do not tend to see a confederate father with a union son, it was usually the reverse. this was a boy who wanted to assert his independence from his father. of course a boy like that is going to be seduced by the mystique of the rebels. parents did not see this as an act of deeply felt politics.

brutus was not about to start debating politics with his son. matters -- the war may have rudely intruded on their family life. possible to deflect the awards -- deflect the wars again. that was brutus clay's way of doing that. when he announced this he will be dealt with. i'm going to reassert my power over him. some opted to retrieve their sons from the confederate army and make them stay home. still others refused to send money or aid when their sons asked for it, using the leverage of their accustomed parental support to force their sons return home again.

briskly may have opted for the most extreme form of punishment summit's inheritance against zeke. and maybe in part because he was already feeling pretty powerless over another errant child, his daughter, martha. i don't have her picture, either. in the 1850's, martha had married a man named henry davenport and moved with him to jefferson county, virginia, now, west virginia. and although she was initially sympathetic with the north in the secession crisis, when her new husband opted to side with the confederacy in the war and actually join the confederate army, martha switched loyalty to the south. she became pretty outspoken about her newfound confederate loyalty and her letters home to her father, and reading them, is are we dealing with zeke and now he's getting letter from martha -- letters from martha that are very pro-confederate and sentiment. in nearly drove him mad. he wanted to do something about

it, but it took the unlikely intervention of his brother, clay. -- caches he says i figured to overlook her secession is him, because it is a virtue and a woman to go with her husband and all things very so don't think about her politics, don't take the politics that seriously, what's important is she is deferring to her husband, let's honor that marital relationship read -- relationship. that's exactly how u.s. army major from vermont approach his own situation in -- situation. willard may be filled -- familiar to you. like to stay in high-end hotels, you know the willard hotel. the was named after joseph and his brother, who were owners of the hotel during the civil war. course is where the

lincoln stage, before lincoln's first inauguration, it was also the site of so many visits and meetings between union political and military notables during the war. joseph did not begin the war he left ite hotel, behind in the hands of his brother and when often served in the new army. by march 1863, he was assigned to guard duty at old capital prison in washington. in that month he was called on to escort a new prisoner there. a woman named antonio ford. ford was the daughter of a prominent local merchant in fairfax, virginia. as well as a loyal confederate. she had been61, camp an honorary aid to cade for jeb stuart.

and sometime in the intervening years, she worked her way into a position spying for the confederacy. a entirely surprising, women were some of the confederacy's best spies. because there were plenty of men out there who were unwilling to believe that a woman would mix yourself up in such matters, and so her gender provided a great cover. unit officials eventually wised at oneord's actions and point, accused her of providing key information to the confederacy that enabled a successful confederate raid on the new headquarters in fairfax courthouse. after doing that, union authorities arrested her. forward -- brought ford to the prison and to joseph willard. they struggle conversation pretty quickly and this would continue over the six months that she was imprisoned at old capital. forde end of it, antonia

founded that she would quote love you as long as i live. the confederate spy and reunion guard had fallen for one another. they weren't the only ones. the war created all sorts of situations that brought enemy men and women together, from the occupation of towns that run unit soldiers and women together on the streets, to the prisons that incarcerated disloyal women like ford, to the hospitals that mixed surgeons, nurses, patients, and volunteers. and very often their interaction was very bitter, often violent. and there is some really important research that being done right now about assault and rape that certainly emerged from these sorts of interactions. though, as this case suggests and many others, familiarity doesn't always breed contempt and violence. enemywere other ways the men and women responded. that's what the little daily

journal noticed when it sent a reporter to nashville. theite the women walking streets with pistols and getting arrested for spitting on union officers, the paper noted that over time, such hostilities seems to be softening in nashville. a number of young ladies of nashville who were at first very fierce towards the u.s. officers, have come around. we said they would. another paper reporting from nashville -- these are union papers, the missouri statesman wrote women in the city by early 1865 or quarter" dropping off into the arms of union soldiers. ifl the boys down in dixie they don't return soon, they won't find a single girl or widow below conscript age in these parts. the national daily press noted that a number of such relationships had formed among volunteer nurses, patients, and doctors in the city. mds seem 1864 that the

to make the most headway in marrying the fair daughters of dixie. what a world we live in, it exclaimed. these relationship for fascinating and very likely exaggerated and even made up his newspapers. echoi cannot go -- can what he said about newspapers. they made a a lot and they loved to make up stories about these families. why would they do it? in some of these cases, but these articles are really doing is jabbing at those confederate men. look what's happening in your absence. you're not only losing your women, they certainly are not paying attention to you anymore. what kind of men are you? the kind of gender warfare, you might say. even if these are all exaggerated or made up, intersectional romances did exist. those involved were less fascinated by the situation then worried in the time of war.

they wanted nothing else than to keep their relationships secret and out of the press. they didn't want people talking about them. because one thing, the reputations were on the line. the loyalty could be called into question. joseph willard knew this well. what would it look like for a union officer to fall for a confederate woman? even worse, what would it look like for a man to fall for a woman who failed to defer to his politics. it's a virtue of a woman to go with a husband and all things, so what kind of man was he to put up with something else? joseph willard could not let her go either and they began envisioning the future together. at one point, joseph proposed to antonia, suggesting they get married secretly. but there, antonia drew the line. you know i love you, she said, but major, i can never consent to a private marriage. instead, she offered another way out.

i know you are true to the government and i love you nonetheless for it, she continued. but the obstacle is with you, not me. joseph could remove that obstacle by resigning from the union army. he laugh, just wait. joseph considered her plan seriously, but was concerned, again, not telling his superior officers that he wanted to resign to marry a confederate. with either accept his resignation on those grounds? probably not. but then he gave with another plan. he would resign, on the grounds of needing to tend to his family's business back in washington, d.c. and that's what he did. he did resign, they married and went quietly to the willard hotel in washington and had three children. you might wonder how on earth is actually worked. there wasn't that much discord between them.

?ow did they make this work the key was similar to what we saw with fathers and sons. retreating into private life and making sure both spouses were no longer talking more acting publicly on their loyalty. men had to resign and willard was not the only one who did the best thing. women had to stop getting involved publicly, parading their politics visibly as antonia ford had done. it was less like that to attract attention and to attract critics. they could kind of live with their opposing sentiment and manage it as long as it was contained in the family and the private sector. as long as the kind of domesticated their differences. this was much harder to do for siblings divided across the

union confederate border, especially brothers. they quickly realized that differences in political opinion can translate into opposing sides in an actual battle. during the wars opening months, some of them tried to take action to prevent that worst-case scenario from happening. one confederate decided to rush to volunteer first before his brother did, thinking it might discourage his brother from then volunteering for the other side. as he wrote to their sister, he must not take sides against me, i am the oldest and have a right to the first choice. and if i decide to fight, is what he is saying. but that eventually, conscription came, leaving brothers with less of a choice about whether to take up arms, and in many cases then, this was met with quite a change in june. -- in tune. if he is ever exchanged a mutiny on the battlefield, i will fight him or anybody else wrote a

missouri unionist on hearing the news of his confederate brothers imprisonment. i would strike down my own brother if you dare raise a flat -- a hand to destroy that flag wrote another unionist in virginia. in still another -- if i could meet any of my relatives or my brother on the battlefield, they were there be considered as my enemies and treated as such. some of this may be the kind of bluster we would expect in a time of war, in the heat of the moment. it was also in keeping with the pervasive sense of honor possessed by civil war soldiers. this was another way they could prove themselves to be diehard partisans for their cause, if they said they were willing to confront their kin in battle. brothers though, more than any other family relation divided by this war came to embrace the idea that there can should be treated like an enemy. and yet they still have their limits. this is only how they related to one another in the heat of battle. as soon as the fighting stopped,

though, something different took over. that enemy became a brother again. i'll give you one example. that appeared in an article in the little daily journal -- louisville daily journal, reporting from perryville. , theding to this article regal battle, there were two brothers with the last name hopkins. they didn't identify the first names. one brother was a confederate and the other was a unionist hopkins. and fighting is broken out and a one point, the new miss shoots into a crowd of confederates and shoots his own brother, and he falls. according to the article, the union brother approached his wounded brother immediately thereafter, told the mortally wounded confederate that he had quote done on purpose, and then left. night, as things that settle down, the new brother returned to the scene of the battle, brought water on a

blanket and stayed with his ailing brother for half the night. the weber explained the actions of that brother by the fact that he was quote a man of family. and this is quite a story. was it all true? newspapers did look to talk about instances of brother versus brother, here's one article, brother against brother you see in the headline. if you go through the civil war newspaper you will see brother shoots brother, brothers blood, these are the sorts of titles you see through the stories. and again, many are exaggerated and some made up altogether. and that's how i viewed the original story, i just always assumed it was made up and contrived. until i moved to kentucky and befriended some of the staff and they got interested in the story and have since confirmed there were two brothers named hopkins, one in the indiana regiment and another from the mississippi regiment were there that day. so maybe this was true. who knows?

regardless, even if the story and some of the others were made up, it does illustrate a more widely repeated pattern of brothers, divided brothers. assuming kind of a dual relationship as one brother put still privatemies friends. we can privately be brothers, but publicly, we are enemies. even as these families went to varying lengths to separate their private lives from public conflict, there was something else working against their efforts. something else that was less inclined to believe that husband and wife could safely maintain their relationship with her brothers still love each other, yet maintain loyalty to each side. something or someone else preferred to look upon these families with more suspicion. aboutomewhat i'm talking is really a collective of governing officials on both

sides. governments both union and confederacy looked upon divided families with suspicion. mike these families use their personal connections to pass secrets? offer therese's aid to the cause? can these families be trusted? that was the question that started to grow and loom among officials on both sides. union prostion that martial officials asked in many places, when he works to prevent families from traveling across the line. there were restrictions affecting anybody trying to cross the lines in this war, but divided families that little understanding. they were deemed suspicious and often not allowed to travel across the lines. was also a question, can these families be trusted, that was , who whenail sensors family or anyone tried to send mail, they would find their mail

opened and read. there was a union policy that if you wanted to send a letter across the lines, not only did you have to pay the postage of both sides, but your letter can only be one page long and it had to be focused only on quote family and domestic affairs. according to the policy is supposed to be benign and so forth, but soon, some of these mail centers even found a little troubling to see these warm sentiments being passed across the lines between family members. i'll come back to that in a moment. whole questions of can families be trusted, after abraham lincoln and his extended top relatives. an agent four when one of his wife's half-sisters, martha todd white, from alabama, she visited the lincolns in washington and got passed from lincoln himself. and she found herself subject to skating news accounts in the weeks that followed, aid and comfort for the enemy, was the

title of one of the news accounts. story, the reporters accused white of smuggling gold in her skirt on her way back to the south. other articles went further, accusing lincoln of being overly indulgent of his confederate family members in granting martha todd white a pass to travel. and some went so far as to say well, lincoln, he has offered aid and comfort to the enemy. the union is thus betrayed in the white house screamed one newspaper account. these reports were great exaggerations. theit was no coincidence most exaggerated stories of martha todd white strip came from democratic newspapers. lincoln's greatest breaks in the north and this was in 1864, so this was his reelection year. tothe story was trumped up really jab at him in election year.

beganncolns essentially -- mccain did exhibit a for why divided families should not be trusted. when that sort of distress led to these very restrictive pass of policies, out of these divided families expect to maintain any sort of emotional bonds if they lived on either side of the line? here they came up with some interesting ways of maintaining contact. in 1863, the richmond inquirer and the new york daily news launched an ad exchange. they launched what we can call an ad exchange, and how it worked was somebody could take out a personal ad in the new york daily news and in the richmond inquirer would reprint those ads so people in virginia could read it. the reverse was true as well. his familyd having members started taking out these short ads to try to communicate

to a family member and the other state. i will read one for you. this one here, you can see this on the screen is from albany, new york written by a woman named fanny, and she is writing to her mother in richmond, virginia. she says your communication was thankfully received as i was very anxious to hear from you. not having received any word from you since april last, he was indeed welcome. home, alll and at joined in sending love, hoping to meet soon, your affectionate daughter, fanny. a daughter in new york to her mother in richmond. here's another one. this will just read the entire added. edward c huntley, richmond, virginia. well, no word from kate. and sarah dad. money in bank for you, homes executive.

i'm keeping hotel at catskill, i started twice to see you, couldn't get there. heard from you sometime ago answered for direction. let us hear from you again. jack. in a very short amount of space, he jammed all sorts of updates in there. it's short and very public and not very intimate. it seems kind of innocuous communication across the lines. ,ot really much of a big deal it doesn't seem like it should be from the vantage point of human or confederate authorities. there was one unit in who did find it problematic. union judge advocate general joseph holt. when he got wind of this ad exchange, he quickly shut it down. he concluded the system was quote a violation of the laws of war. why? they added -- they offered aid and comfort to the enemy and therefore quote have a very

great effect in inducing them to persevere in their disloyal and traitorous purposes. getting just an expression of love from a family member in new york is giving them enough comfort to continue on with their fight for the confederacy is what holds is seeing here. assist reason. both newspapers roundly criticized joseph holt for this decision. the new york daily news lamented that the judge evidently believes quote a mother's affection is treason. but they had no choice and both newspapers complied. and they shut it all down. show that no matter how much these families thought they can handle the differences on their own, privately, not how much they thought they could separate the private relationship from their public loyalties, they were plenty of others around it like joseph holt who were less confident in their ability to do so. even a private relationship with problematic in this war. war, strained

these families and by the end of the war, he took some real work for that private relationship to survive intact. immediately after the hostilities ceased, it was pretty common to see the human family member in particular reach out to a confederate and their family. sometimes they would reach out by offering tragical assistance, they might offer money, they might offer hey, do you want to come live with me? help in even offer appealing to you and the authorities for parole or a pardon for a confederate family member. we see very commonly in the immediate aftermath some kind of sense of duty is kicking in for of these family members and they recognize that their confederate family have a long way to go to get back on their feet. in the clay family, i will come back to them.

clay hady 1865, brutus been elected to congress from kentucky, was elected back in 1863. using washington, d.c. and in january 65 he writes home to his wife and says he has gone right to the top for help in getting his son some assistance. what did they do need? he remained in the confederate army and had been captured and imprisoned by union forces. brutus saw an opportunity to get him a little help, even though he already disinherited his son, terry complicated. he wrote and so i called to see the president today in regard to ezekiel. he treated me kindly and gave me his promise to release him as a prisoner of war on his parole to go home. you may therefore expect him home soon.

deal to getgotten a the gut of prison. the part of the deal was that he was not going to be exchanged to go back to fight, he was going to come home. he was going to be washed over by his family again. among the willard and for families, in this case, you would expect the war to taking quite a toll, because among the 750,000 killed in this war, and tony afford lost a brother who served in the confederate army. and yet the two remained married. they had their children and just after the war, joseph willard extended a sort of all of branch to the ford family in virginia. for some for younger siblings to come live with them in washington and he would pay for their education. and one of her sisters did agree to come and do that. antonia died in 1871, not too far after the war.

joseph never remarried. they had a son, also named joseph, who went on to serve in the virginia house of delegates and later became lieutenant governor of virginia. and he became an ambassador to spain under woodrow wilson. he, in turn, had a daughter, their granddaughter who would later marry colonel roosevelt, the son of teddy roosevelt of new york. you have this virginia and new york family intermarry in. other families found it much, much harder. even as they may have offered gestures of practical assistance across the lines, it was just simply very difficult to achieve any full reconciliation. any sort of emotional reconciliation. and in that respect, these families felt the permanent scars of war. these divided families tried not to let that happen. they tried not to let resentment and anger overtake any affection they once had for one another.

and the most common way they tried to do it was earth one another to simply forget what happened. forget the war, forget what it was all about, forget what we differed over. and if you look at their letters from the immediate postwar period, i can tell you the number of times these races are included. let bygones be bygones, let the dead past, there is dead. they are imagining reconciliation but imagining it is one that requires forgetting, for getting quite a bit. and that's a big thing to ask, how can they forget after four years of war and 750,000 killed? how can they simply put the civil war and everything that this war was about behind them? they had a hard time, and so the emotional wounds remained very raw. in some families, correspondents stopped over time, so maybe it had continued right after the war, but eventually it died out.

in some cases, a portrait was turned against the wall of the family member. some never saw each other again. george henry thomas here in virginia never visited his confederate sisters again. it --all jackson, stonewall jackson's unionist married to aen confederate and a different political allegiances played a part in that. survived,nal scars even if family duty could in some degree survive. the stories of these families, and their difficult and incomplete family reconciliation became a metaphor for the nation. these families became very useful in the decades, later decades of the 19th century. grapplingcans were about the ways to remember this war, grappling for ways to forget slavery and forget much of what this war was about,

these divided families became very useful. the are central image in fiction of the time, and the poetry of the time, in the cartoons of the time. as avision the nation family that divided that now is reuniting is to envision the nation and reconciliation in a way that forgets what divided them, but really emphasizes what had always kept in their from the start. i will leave it there and thank you for your attention. [applause] i'm also happy to answer any questions you may have. >> thank you so much for your wonderful talk. a couple of questions i have got is thinking about generational

divides, you said you mentioned andt the sons rebelling joining the confederacy against the newness father. and the other part of my question is about a change over time, i suspect. for example, with the confederacy, there were times when women do to hardship at home demanded that there has and come home. later on when union armies invaded the home, women move back towards being the fiercest confederates of them all and attacked the husbands and sons for cowardice. >> right question. you brought up generation and yes, one of our speakers later this afternoon has written a wonderful book about generations and seven men in this war. as peter carmichael, just advertise this book.

the women, the scenario you justice described to the women you're talking about, there are plenty of confederate women out with who get disenchanted the war effort, but not the confederacy. they draw distinction in their minds. they might want their husband to desert and come home, but they are not become a unionist, necessarily. at the same time. there's an important distinction to draw there, to being disenchanted with the local cause and being subjected with the war effort. >> you throughout 750,000, how did we go from 620 -- >> i threw that out there like it except conventional wisdom. i don't know when this one is but sometime in the last 10 years, there was a really horrible work done to recalculate the civil war dead and there was an article in the

journal civil war history by j david hacker was really the lead researcher on this and he just took a different approach to accounting. he did a very complex analysis of the census getting into the postwar period. i'm not a quantitative person myself mechanics play and how it works, but i found it convincing. a measure that sounds convincing to you. now is the new conventional wisdom. as a result. >> thank you for your talk. i'm intrigued by the willard story. antonia ford, any further context? did you just stop her spying, anymore context there? >> i didn't find any evidence of further spine, though that would be quite a coup on her part.

no, there wasn't any indication of that. she got a really interesting story and there was some postwar denial that she ever really on theor the confederacy part of some union men and also even some confederates. into a lot ofback the documents of the time, it's pretty clear that she was up to something and there was a reason why the union arrested and imprisoned her for six months. but it was a little bit of postwar denial going on, wanting to diminish the significance and not just what she did, but i think some of these confederate women in general, or any woman who was acting in such a political -- outwardly political sort of way. but no evidence that she continued spying.

>> i was curious about the clay and davenport families. your sources for -- the clay -- the letters -- where the best sources for those that you used?>> in that particular case, their family members are available in manuscript form at the university of kentucky special collections. when i first started this book, i still -- a kind of just started as a curiosity thing. i didn't know if i would find any examples of this being real and true. -- i wantedgo find family papers. i did what you're about it from newspapers to start with the reasons we talked about. i wanted to hear it from them. it was a difficult task to find those collections. they are not catalogued under divided family. so wasn't easy to find. did start to find if you go to an archive in kentucky or maryland or missouri and

virginia, the states i mentioned , you're not going to have trouble finding some. i just happened upon the clays. i had read some older works about the clays that had mentioned some family divisions, so that gave me a clue. but this was just all in their papers that they left behind. >> dr. taylor, thank you for that. little onfollow up a adrian's question about he describesnd kind of a hardened domesticity with distinct roles for private space and public space. that equally amongst northern waiting households and southerly leaning households? i'm thinking back to an older generation of historiography that describes southern households as for economic

demands a little more open, but also open public platforms for masculine honor. and if you find that this hardened domesticity in southern households as well, what does this suggest about southern family life in contemporary america at the time. >> just to bring anybody up to speed on what we're talking about here, there has long been an assumption that in the 19th century, ideals about family underwent a shift and we see it really sort of coming out of the north, out of the industrial north, the urban north and middle-class families in particular who could start to envision work as something separate from their household. they were no longer living in households that were productive units and farms, but they were starting to be able to live in households where a man would leave and go work somewhere else during the day, and this will

shift started generating a belief that this was the ideal, this was how things should be. it should be a difference between public and private, that hardened domesticity that you are talking about. we long assumed that the south with its plantations and its households that are very much focused on production of the south would not have attached themselves to this idea. when i found was they still talk that way. there's a big difference between the way people talk and what they aspire to and what they think is right and how family should be. there's always a gap between that and what things really are. see in sounds we can these families a lot of intersection between public and private life. but they still come in their literary journals, and their magazines and so forth, they are talking about how they should be a great distinction between public and private. but these families show is you can talk this way, but families are never going to be insulated

from public life. it's always going to intrude and i think everything one of these families, north or south, shows that. >> you mentioned something about how many times you read let bygones be bygones, let's just forget all about this. when you mentioned that, it made me think about all the monuments and memorials and the confederate flag -- having directed them and of course, still being around. and i thought about if we had completely forgotten about it, that stuff would still be here send all whicht of comments on social media that have been forgotten. was the whole moveon movement and the memorialization movement to separate movements -- two separate movements?

how do they feel about each other? >> i would say they are all part of the same thing and when i described in these families is a more explicit -- explicitly theessed and it's also in monuments. what these families are saying let's not talk politics, let's not talk slavery, let's not talk about all the things that bothered us and in the latter part of the 19 century, when you see these monuments go up as part of this lost cause memorialization effort, a lot of what it's doing is forgetting or at least setting aside so we can't see the difficult issue of slavery that was really behind this war. it's all of one piece and i for these families become a very useful image and metaphor of the memorialization effort. stand --'t see divided divided families of statues, but

they're living stories of these families who sort of emphasized the nation as a family read we can come together based on our shared path, our shared when you envision the nation as a family, you are emphasizing what you share and downplaying what divides you. >> thank you. i really enjoyed your talk and the topic here. however, i was mostly very much intrigued by your first slide, by the books that have drawn your initial interest. i have not seen anything like that. when was this published and how big was it? and what was it -- what was in it? >> 1887 comments it's part of an interesting -- i noticed genre of anecdote book. i know dr. robertson has a huge

library and he probably knows more about this type of publication. sometimes they pulled from newspapers from the civil war years through i don't know where they get some of the stories, but they are very short. less than a page, halfpage or less. just exactly what it says, anecdotes and incidents of the rebellion. sometime the latter part of the 19 century, people wanted a little bit of humor and fun about this war. it is still a piece with the memorialization effort.

now, back to the symposium. maytudying -- many of you know her as founding curator of african american history at the virginia historical society, or she curated or that one doesn't exhibitions over 15 years. among her most important accomplishments was her role as project leader and historian for the