Overview

During six months in 1862, William Jefferson Whatley and his wife, Nancy Falkaday Watkins Whatley, exchanged a series of letters that vividly demonstrate the quickly changing roles of women whose husbands left home to fight in the Civil War. When William Whatley enlisted with the Confederate Army in 1862, he left his young wife Nancy in charge of their cotton farm in East Texas, near the village of Caledonia in Rusk County. In letters to her husband, Nancy describes in elaborate detail how she dealt with and felt about her new role, which thrust her into an array of unfamiliar duties, including dealing with increasingly unruly slaves, overseeing the harvest of the cotton crop, and negotiating business transactions with unscrupulous neighbors. At the same time, she carried on her traditional family duties and tended to their four young children during frequent epidemics of measles and diphtheria. Stationed hundreds of miles away, her husband could only offer her advice, sympathy, and shared frustration. In An East Texas Family's Civil War, the Whatleys' great-grandson, John T. Whatley, transcribes and annotates these letters for the first time. Notable for their descriptions of the unraveling of the local slave labor system and accounts of rural southern life, Nancy's letters offer a rare window on the hardships faced by women on the home front taking on unprecedented responsibilities and filling unfamiliar roles.

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Reviews

John Whatley has made a significant contribution to our understanding of the impact of the Civil War on the domestic life of the southern yeomanry and their enslaved workers. This is a skillfully edited work that brings light to a previously untapped but historically valuable and fascinating correspondence between a man and wife swept up in the chaos and turmoil of a terrible war. It is greatly enriched by the editor's thoughtful analysis and a masterful foreword contributed by famed historian Jacqueline Jones. Highly recommended.--Don Carleton, executive director and J. R. Parten Chair in the Archives of American History, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History In his finding and editing of An East Texas Family's Civil War: the Letters of Nancy and William Whatley, John T. Whatley captures the anguish of a separated family when the 'dogs of war' are unleashed. Jacqueline Jones' fine foreword gives a rich historical framework for the letters. This is an important book for Texans, historians, and Civil War studies.--Ellen Clarke Temple, former president of the board of the Museum of East Texas

Author Information

John T. Whatley is the former headmaster of St. Mark's School of Texas and has taught history throughout his education career. Jacqueline Jones is chair of the department of history at the University of Texas, Austin.

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