North Carolina Museum of History
North Carolina and the Civil War
about

explore

artifacts

resources

FAQ
Organization and Rank
NC Battles
NC Generals
Reenactors
Genealogy
Bibliography
Historic Sites and Museums
Links for Kids
For Teachers


Annotated Bibliography

Though few battles scarred North Carolina soil, the Tar Heel State's participation in the Civil War has been of great interest to historians. Civil War literature ranges from general reading and campaign narratives to children's books and scholarly texts. The following annotated list includes recent studies and classic readings.

  • Politics / Coming of the War / General

  • Women

  • Home Front

  • Soldier Life

  • Campaigns and Battles

  • Biography

  • Medicine

  • Navy

  • First-Person Accounts

  • Reference

  • Slavery / Emancipation



  • Women

    Andrews, Matthew Page, comp. The Women of the South in War Times. Baltimore: Norman, Remington Co., 1924.
    • Essays, diary excerpts, and reminiscences, including two accounts of Sherman's march through North Carolina, recall the suffering and courage of Southern women.

    Bynum, Victoria E. Unruly Women: The Politics of Social and Sexual Control in the Old South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.
    • Poor white and free black women inadvertently subvert the dominant social order to endure the hardships of war.

    Faust, Drew Gilpin. Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
    • Women experiencing wartime austerity choose their personal security over Southern independence.

    Graham, Christopher A. "Women's Revolt in Rowan County." Columbiad: A Quarterly Review of the War Between the States 3 (spring 1999): 131–147.
    • Rapid inflation, meager government relief to the poor, and the sudden loss of hundreds of men to battle created a vacuum in early 1863 in which women reacted violently to their desperate situation.

    Inscoe, John C. "Coping in Confederate Appalachia: Portrait of a Mountain Woman and Her Community at War." North Carolina Historical Review 69 (October 1992): 388–413.
    • Inscoe chronicles the struggle of Macon County resident Mary Bell, wife of a halfhearted Confederate officer, to manage her farm through wartime hardships.

    McGee, David H. "‘Home and Friends': Kinship, Community, and Elite Women in Caldwell County, North Carolina, during the Civil War." North Carolina Historical Review 74 (October 1997): 363–388.
    • Elite Caldwell County women close ranks upon their small kinship networks to support their men in the army and to endure the bleak wartime economy.

    McKinney, Gordon B. "Women's Role in Civil War Western North Carolina." North Carolina Historical Review 69 (January 1992): 37–56.
    • McKinney describes the disillusionment of Confederate women in western North Carolina and the subsequent decline in their support of the Southern cause.


    Home - About - Explore - Artifacts - Resources
    ©2005 North Carolina Museum of History
    Office of Archives and History, Department of Cultural Resources