Queen Of The Confederacy

This is a story of a remarkable woman - Lucy Holcombe Pickens - the wife of Francis Wilkinson Pickens, governor of South Carolina on the eve of the Civil War.

When Jefferson Davis became president of the Confederacy, his wife, Varina Howell Davis, reluctantly became the First Lady. For this highly intelligent, acutely observant woman, loyalty did not come easily: she spent long years struggling to reconcile her societal duties to her personal beliefs. Raised in Mississippi but educated in Philadelphia, and a long-time resident of Washington, D.C., Mrs. Davis never felt at ease in Richmond. During the war she nursed Union prisoners and secretly corresponded with friends in the North. Though she publicly supported the South, her term as First Lady was plagued by rumors of her disaffection. After the war, Varina Davis endured financial woes and the loss of several children, but following her husband's death in 1889, she moved to New York and began a career in journalism. Here she advocated reconciliation between the North and South and became friends with Julia Grant, the widow of Ulysses S. Grant. She shocked many by declaring in a newspaper that it was God's will that the North won the war. A century after Varina Davis's death in 1906, Joan E. Cashin has written a masterly work, the first definitive biography of this truly modern, but deeply conflicted, woman. Pro-slavery but also pro-Union, Varina Davis was inhibited by her role as Confederate First Lady and unable to reveal her true convictions. In this pathbreaking book, Cashin offers a splendid portrait of a fascinating woman who struggled with the constraints of her time and place.

"The wife of South Carolina secessionist governor Francis W. Pickens and known as the "Queen of the Confederacy," Lucy Holcombe Pickens (1832-1899) was during her lifetime one of the most famous women in the South. Indeed, she was the only woman pictured on Confederate currency. Rumor was that in her youth she published a novel under a pseudonym. Recently discovered as The Free Flag of Cuba; or, The Martyrdom of Lopez: A Tale of the Liberating Expedition of 1851, a romanticized account of the 1851 filibustering expedition to Cuba led by Narciso Lopez, it was published under the alias H. M. Hardimann in 1854. With this new edition, Orville Vernon Burton and Georganne B. Burton resurrect Holcombe's lost work and prove it to be a window on many pressing nineteenth-century issues, including patriotism, freedom, independence, imperialism, nationalism, race, the role of southern women, and slavery." "A not-so-subtle plea for U.S. support for Cuban independence from Spain, Holcombe's novel vindicates Lopez and his men, who were officially regarded as mercenaries, some of them captured and executed. The young author was determined to have an influence on the national debates of her time, and her book declared to the world that the Lopez campaign was noble and he and his men were martyred heroes." "Revealing the link between gender issues and filibustering, Holcombe's tale clearly reflects the values southern aristocratic women expected in men, even if preserving those values meant death and defeat - a harbinger of ardent support for the Confederacy by women like Lucy. Like the South's secession, the Lopez expedition was an abject failure, and the novel eerily presages Lost Cause mythology."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

From the Chesapeake incident off the coast of Nova Scotia, through the St Albans Raid from Quebec into Vermont, to the reinforcing of garrisons across British North America in response to the Trent Affair, The Civil War Years ranges across the early Canadian landscape. It offers an in-depth survey of Canadian public opinion on the war, the role of Confederate sympathizers in Canada, and the number of Canadians enlisted in the armies of the North and South. The second edition includes a new introduction that provides an overview of Civil War studies since the book's original publication in 1960. The Civil War Years remains a valuable contribution to Canadian history, the history of Canadian-American and Anglo-American relations, and Civil War studies.

When Jefferson Davis became president of the Confederacy, his wife, Varina Howell Davis, reluctantly became the First Lady. For this highly intelligent, acutely observant woman, loyalty did not come easily: she spent long years struggling to reconcile her societal duties to her personal beliefs. Raised in Mississippi but educated in Philadelphia, and a long-time resident of Washington, D.C., Mrs. Davis never felt at ease in Richmond. During the war she nursed Union prisoners and secretly corresponded with friends in the North. Though she publicly supported the South, her term as First Lady was plagued by rumors of her disaffection. After the war, Varina Davis endured financial woes and the loss of several children, but following her husband's death in 1889, she moved to New York and began a career in journalism. Here she advocated reconciliation between the North and South and became friends with Julia Grant, the widow of Ulysses S. Grant. She shocked many by declaring in a newspaper that it was God's will that the North won the war. A century after Varina Davis's death in 1906, Joan E. Cashin has written a masterly work, the first definitive biography of this truly modern, but deeply conflicted, woman. Pro-slavery but also pro-Union, Varina Davis was inhibited by her role as Confederate First Lady and unable to reveal her true convictions. In this pathbreaking book, Cashin offers a splendid portrait of a fascinating woman who struggled with the constraints of her time and place.

Twenty-five original Civil War stories include tales of horror and dark fantasy by such writers as Richard Gilliam, Martin H. Greenberg, William S. Burroughs, S. P. Somtow, Anne McCaffrey, and Brad Strickland. Reprint.

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David Shaw is the author of America's Victory and a number of other books. He lives in Maine.