Frances M. Clarke

Forgetting the Women: Debates over Female Patriotism in the Aftermath of America's Civil War

Northern women were mobilized in unprecedented numbers during Americas Civil War. In its aftermath, it looked like their efforts would be celebrated long into the future, a possibility signaled by the publication of Frank Moores Women of the War in 1866. Instead, this unique flourishing of female volunteerism was largely forgotten by the turn of the century. This article explains this erasure by analyzing the letters women sent to Moore as he set about memorializing their war work. It demonstrates that women were deeply divided over how to articulate an ideal of patriotic womanhood, and these divisions undermined their ability to advance a coherent story about their efforts. Moreover, most adhered to a standard of humility that worked against remembering womens wartime participation. As a result, memories of the Civil War quickly came to focus solely on the battlefield.

Studying Underage Enlistment in the American Civil War

Abstract:Drawn from a panel created for the 2017 American Historical Association Conference in Denver and framed by Michael Grossbergs commentary, this roundtable offers case studies of three very different moments when the law attempted to define the nature of childhood. Rebecca Jo Plant and Frances M. Clarke explore that definition in the context of underage soldiers during the American Civil War; Nicholas L. Syrett examines it in the context of miscegenation and illegitimacy at the turn of the twentieth century, and Jennifer Robin Terry investigates it in the context of legislation protecting child performers in the first few decades of the twentieth century.

No Minor Matter: Underage Soldiers, Parents, and the Nationalization of Habeas Corpus in Civil War America

In the aftermath of the Civil War, state judges lost their long-held right to inquire into the legality of federal detentions, and habeas corpus—once almost solely the business of state courts—was largely transformed into a federal remedy. We argue that the wartime furor surrounding underage enlistees was a key factor in driving this legal change. Scholarship on the use of habeas corpus during the war generally concentrates on cases involving freedom of speech or political association, but thousands of parents and guardians also petitioned Union authorities and state courts to retrieve minor children who had enlisted without their consent. Angrily demanding that the military discharge such youths, they portrayed control over the personhood and labor of minor children as fundamental to American liberty. At the same time, state court judges fought to retrain jurisdiction over such cases as a critical check on federal and military power. We illuminate these conflicts by drawing on a rich array of sources that capture the competing perspectives of federal and state court judges, Lincoln Administration officials, elected representatives, military officers, parents and guardians, and minors themselves. In the process, we show the halting and contested transformation of habeas corpus, the outcome of which ultimately redefined the relationship between American citizens and their government, preventing aggrieved parents from using state courts to safeguard their rights against federal and military authorities, and blocking state courts from querying the legality of federal detentions of any kind.

Awaiting the Heavenly Country: The Civil War and America's Culture of Death (review)

the Indian Army’s recruits. It was against this growing unrest that Burton’s history appeared, and in its reification of the critical cultural traits and military characteristics which distinguished British from Indians, and Sikhs from Hindus (and Muslims), it sought to restore a number of the dichotomies upon which colonial rule had come to depend, and which the various manifestations of nationalism and anti-colonialism were threatening to undermine. The history of the Punjab, and of the interplay between that region and the practices and ideologies of colonial rule, is a rapidly shifting field, and many of the editor’s assertions, whether explicitly articulated or implicitly woven into his text, are not nearly as neutral or objective as is suggested. This impression is further strengthened by the editor’s use of such loaded terms as ‘religious fanatics’ (p. xiv) and ‘kaffirs’ (p. xvi) which would not have been out of place in 1911 but are at best highly anachronistic and at worst inaccurate and misleading a hundred years later. Religious identities, such as Hindu, Muslim, and most importantly for this work, Sikh, were much more fluid and far less homogenous than is assumed here. In fact, as recent works have demonstrated, what constituted a Sikh was dynamically developed in the nineteenth century as colonial identity constructions came into contact, and at times conflict, with indigenous efforts at identify formation. Moreover, the elaboration of the doctrine of martial races required a particular understanding of Sikh identity and history which works such as this history helped to bolster. As long as these caveats are borne in mind, Burton’s History is a very worthwhile read, providing not only a comprehensive overview of the major military battles of these two campaigns but also insights into the presuppositions of colonial military historiography.