Emma Spaulding Bryant : Civil War Bride, Carpetbagger's Wife, Ardent Feminist: Letters 1860–1900 / ed. by Ruth Douglas Currie.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Currie, Ruth Douglas, Editor.

Series:

Reconstructing America

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (518 p.)

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Fordham University Press, [2023]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Emma Spaulding's life might have been the simple story of a nineteenth-century woman in rural Maine. Instead, wooed by the ambitious John Emory Bryant, the Yankee Reconstruction activist and Georgia politician, she became the Civil War bride of a Republican carpetbagger intent on reforming the South. The grueling years in the shadow of her husband's controversial political career gave her a backbone of steel and the convictions of an early feminist. Emma supported John's agenda-to "northernize" the South and work for civil rights for African-Americans- and frequently reflected on national political events. Struggling virtually alone to rear a daughter in near poverty, Emma became an independent thinker, suffragist, and officer in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. In eloquent letters, Emma coached her husband's understanding of "the woman question;" their remarkable correspondence frames a marriage of love and summarizes John's career as it determined the contours of Emma's own story—from the bitter politics of Reconstruction Georgia to her world as a mother, writer, editor, and teacher in Tennessee and, with her husband, running a mission for the homeless in New York.In this extraordinary resource, Ruth Douglas Currie organizes and edits their voluminous correspondence, enhancing the letters with an extensive introduction to Emma Spaulding Bryant's life, times, and legacy.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

FOREWORD AND GRATITUDES

EDITORIAL NOTE

INTRODUCTION

LETTERS: 1860-1864

LETTERS: 1865-1867

LETTERS: 1868-1869

LETTERS: 1870-1871

LETTERS: 1872-1873

LETTERS: 1874-1877

LETTERS: 1878-1879

LETTERS: DECEMBER 1879-JANUARY 1881

LETTERS: 1881-1883

LETTERS: 1884-1886

LETTERS: 1887-1890

LETTERS: 1891-1896

LETTERS: 1897-1900

EPILOGUE

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 27. Jan 2023)

ISBN:

0-8232-9541-9