Southern Women: Black and White in the Old South

Unlike their Northern counterparts, Southern women lived in relative obscurity, giving rise to, and often making them victims of, myth and exaggeration. In Southern Women, Professor McMillen considers diaries, letters, and other personal accounts as well as the latest scholarly research to present an alternate view into the lives of antebellum Southern women, helping to dispel myths about how these women lived.

This intriguing narrative assesses similarites and differences among the various classes of Southern women, as well as interracial and class relationships. A wholly new chapter on Southern women and the Confederacy--including rare scholarship on yeoman and poor farmwives--and photographic essay help make the second edition of this versatile text ideal as supplementary reading in the U.S. History survey as well as in courses on Southern, Social, and Women's, and African American History.