LeeAnn Whites pays tribute to women in Civil War in UNC lecture

On the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, the University took a step back Wednesday to appreciate the war’s feminine side.

Before a mostly female crowd of nearly 100 people, LeeAnn Whites said an account of the war that included only a description of the battles waged between the Union and Confederate armies would be insufficient. It would leave out the women, she said.

Whites, a history professor at the University of Missouri, drove that point home on Wednesday during her lecture, “Battle for the Home Front: Revisiting the Role of Women in the Civil War,” in Wilson Library.

“My big point in this talk is that we have really failed to consider the domestic supply of women to men in various military capacities,” Whites said.

She spoke about the role of women as suppliers for soldiers in guerilla war.

“It’s all about supply, and who do you think supplied the guerrillas?” she said. “The people who supplied the guerrillas were their female kin.”

Whites also spoke about an argument between historians studying women and those studying military actions about whether women were empowered or overwhelmed by the absence of men during the war.

She said the importance of the home front during the war has become invisible because of that argument.

“Historians of women have been so concerned with changing the status of women that they haven’t really been that interested in the roles of women in the war,” Whites said. “Military historians are interested in the formal field of battle, not the guerrilla war of women.”

Whites took the side that women played a crucial part in the conflict.

“Some men lived and some men died based on whether or not they got supplies from home,” she said.

“If we see women as military factors, we will see that the home front war was much more important than previously realized.”

Senior Rumin Sarwar said she thought Whites’ lecture was important for UNC students to hear because of its emphasis on the significance of women’s roles during the war.

“The mainstream media tends to make history male-dominated, but there are a lot of important things that women did as well,” she said.

Freshman Sarah Munday also said she thought it was important to be aware of all elements of the war.

“It is good to get different perspectives and important to understand other factors besides the one of men fighting,” she said.

The lecture was a part of the University libraries’ ongoing celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.

Biff Hollingsworth, collecting and public programming archivist, said Whites’ message is relevant to the current student body.

“Her particular theme — the home front theme — is pretty poignant given that we are living in war time and there are current students with family members in the war who are going through similar experiences,” he said.

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