ABSTRACT
The reality of their distinctiveness and the limits of their diversity became clear enough when Southerners examined the fitness of their society for war in 1861. Secession and the need to make war spurred Southerners to enthusiastic industrial effort in the early part of the war. Neither the Southern people nor their leaders could adapt quickly or efficiently enough to the new ways which war thrust upon them. How could an agrarian society like the South finance a costly war against a far better endowed opponent? By 1864 there was evidence on every side, in burnt-out buildings, ripped-up railroad track, devastated fields, and vanishing livestock, of the sheer physical toll of the war on Southern property and resources. The war took Southern women to new places, put them in new jobs and gave them new responsibilities – and, up to a point, new freedom.
