Reviewed by:

• Women’s War: Fighting and Surviving the American Civil War by Stephanie McCurry
• Randall M. Miller

Stephanie McCurry grew up in a Belfast, Northern Ireland, war zone, realizing then and after that women were “never just witnesses to war” (2). As such, she “cannot recognize histories of war that leave women out” (xi). In Women’s War, McCurry uses three case studies to bring Southern women to center stage in the Civil War era. In doing so, she brilliantly shows the ways women made that war and that war made them.

In the strongest chapter in the book, which revises and expands a 2017 Law and Society article on the subject, McCurry examines Southern women’s intense and persistent involvement in the Civil War—among other actions, spying, cutting telegraph wires, stealing supplies, and taking up arms, as well as by supporting their men by demanding men be men. Women’s wartime activities forced Union authorities to revise the prevailing assumptions about their supposed passivity and innocence, which warranted their protection during war, to consider women as political beings capable of independent judgment, action, and responsibility. All this led to drafting Lieber’s Code in 1863, which provided instructions for the conduct of armies and became the template for later codes of war in the Western world. By McCurry’s accounting, Gen. Henry Halleck was the principal mover in revising the code of war, for in facing women and supposed noncombatants engaged in acts of war during his time in bloody Missouri, he realized that old [End Page 66] concepts of treason and respect for noncombatants made no sense. In the Lieber Code that followed, the distinctions between combatant and noncombatant were virtually erased and loyalty tests became the determinant of one’s status and whatever protection one might deserve in war. To be sure, as McCurry notes, Southern women’s wartime roles and their new status in the military code faded from memory as a Lost Cause mythology of women at home sacrificing for their men and a noble cause put Southern white women back on a pedestal, but the facts of women’s war, as reflected in the code, provide the true narrative.

McCurry provides another example of women’s place in war by tracking the emancipation experience of black women during the war, as they left their bondage for the seeming protection and freedom of Union army camps. Many did so to follow their husbands, but others seized the moment of war to make their own run to liberty, often with their children. Such actions forced the Union army to grapple with definitions of enslaved people’s status and the army’s obligation to them. This first led to the army and the Congress describing such people as contraband of war—a word whose definition hinged on them as property rather than persons— but soon led to recognizing them as persons by demanding from them work and, for the men, military service. But women posed a problem, for the presumption of their dependence meant they could only get support by being espoused to a man who served in the army or otherwise actively worked for the Union cause. Marriage thus became critical to gain refuge and support; this had the effect of the army and government encouraging and recognizing marriage as essential to black freedom and to an orderly, Christian society. The army moved women and children to work on loyal and abandoned plantations or to do other tasks, so their “dependence” was not dependence at all, but the assumption of such stuck. Although McCurry does not much explore it, that practical necessity of marriage also met black peoples’ own interests, as many wanted legally recognized marriage—as a respecter of their own wishes, a means of protecting their children, and channel granting access to the law. The irony in this was that as black men and women effected a social revolution by their actions, that revolution in some ways conserved prevailing social concepts, framing women...

审核人：

• 妇女战争：美国内战的斗争与生存斯蒂芬妮·麦卡里（Stephanie McCurry）
• 兰德尔·M·米勒

斯蒂芬妮·麦卡里（Stephanie McCurry）在北爱尔兰贝尔法斯特的战区长大，后来才意识到，妇女“绝不仅仅是战争的见证者”（2）。因此，她“无法辨别将妇女拒之门外的战争历史”（xi）。在《妇女战争》中，麦克库里运用三个案例研究，将南部妇女带入了南北战争时代的中心舞台。在这样做的过程中，她出色地展示了妇女发动这场战争以及这场战争引发了她们的方式。

本书最强的一章修订并扩展了《 2017年法律与社会》麦考里（McCurry）在有关该主题的文章中，考察了南方妇女在南北战争中的长期持续参与—包括侦察，切断电报线，偷窃补给和拿起武器，以及通过要求男人成为男人来支持男人。妇女在战时的活动迫使联盟当局修改了关于其所谓的被动性和无辜性的普遍假设，以保证在战争期间得到保护，将妇女视为能够独立判断，采取行动和承担责任的政治存在。所有这些导致了1863年起草《利伯法典》，为军队的行为提供了指示，并成为后来西方世界战争法典的模板。根据麦库里（McCurry）的说法，亨利·哈雷克（Henry Halleck）将军是修改战争法规的主要推动者，[完第66页]叛国和尊重非战斗人员的概念没有任何意义。在随后的《利伯密码》中，战斗人员和非战斗人员之间的区别实际上被消除了，忠诚度测试成为个人地位以及在战争中应得到的保护的决定因素。可以肯定的是，正如麦克库里指出的那样，南方女性在战时的角色及其在军事法规中的新地位已从记忆中消失，因为女性在家中为男性牺牲自己的“迷失原因”神话，而一个崇高的事业却使南部白人女性重新回到了基石上，但是守则中所反映的妇女战争事实提供了真实的叙述。

麦克库里通过追踪黑人妇女在战争期间的解放经历，提供了妇女在战争中的地位的另一个例子，因为黑人妇女为获得联合军营地的保护和自由而束缚了自己的束缚。许多人这样做是为了跟随他们的丈夫，但其他人抓住战争时刻，常常带着自己的孩子来争取自由。这种行动迫使联盟军努力解决关于被奴役者的地位和军队对他们的义务的定义。这首先导致军队和国会将这类人描述为违禁品战争这个词的定义取决于他们是财产而不是人，但很快就因要求他们工作，并且要求男人服兵役而承认他们是人。但是妇女提出了一个问题，因为对她们的依赖性的推定意味着她们只能通过拥护在军队中服役或以其他方式为联盟事业积极工作的男人而获得支持。因此，婚姻对于获得庇护和支持至关重要。这导致军队和政府鼓励并承认婚姻对于黑人自由和有序的基督教社会至关重要。军队将妇女和儿童转移到忠诚的和被遗弃的种植园工作或执行其他任务，因此，他们的“依赖”根本不是依赖，而是这种依赖的假设。尽管McCurry并没有太多探索，结婚的实际必要性也满足了黑人的自身利益，因为许多人希望获得合法承认的婚姻-尊重自己的意愿，保护自己的孩子的手段以及准予法律访问的渠道。具有讽刺意味的是，当黑人和黑人通过她们的行动进行一场社会革命时，这种革命在某种程度上保留了当时流行的社会观念，使妇女陷于困境。