Marriage in the Civil War According to Eugene Blackford
    by Shivani Dimri

A correspondent of Mary L. Minor, daughter of Professor John B. Minor, wrote her a letter on August 1, 1864 from an area near “Darksville, Va”— present-day Darkesville, West Virginia. The author, a soldier, discussed a number of subjects in his letter, including his suspicion that an acquaintance named Flem Saunders was about to get married. The letter recounts, “I saw Flem Saunders in Martinsbg. The other day, he had just returned from Charville. He could not give any news, or any satisfactory reason for having gone there. This, taken in connection with his having obtained a position at Lynchburg, makes me suspect that he is going to be married.” The author of the letter vented his frustrations about his comrades getting married during the war, declaring, “No soldier, I mean a real soldier, one who is exposed to danger, ought to marry during the war. I have never known an instance where it failed to ruin him – Three of the best Capts – in my Regiments were married last spring, and have done no service since – they backed out most disgracefully, and went home on Leave of Absence, where they will remain until the fighting is over. It has become well understood in the Regiment that a man virtually quits the service, when he marries.”1 This soldier, evidently, did not get swept up in any “marriage mania” coursing through the South during the Civil War.2


The mobilization of the majority of white men of fighting age and the large death toll during in the Civil War altered opinions and patterns of marriage in the South. White women of marrying age in the South feared that the war would rob them of potential husbands—fallen in battle—and relegate them to spinsterhood. This fear was especially pronounced in the South because a greater proportion of white men of fighting age joined the military in the South than in the North. The gender norms and social hierarchy of the slaveholding South also made it harder for unmarried women to support themselves financially and, arguably, to find fulfillment in a society where a woman’s identity as a wife and mother was so prized.3 Perhaps to the dismay of the aforementioned correspondent of Mary L. Minor, many Southern women wanted to marry soldiers during the war. Whether out of patriotism or peer pressure, women (and their families) preferred soldiers to those who did not fight.4 Historian Stephen Berry suggests that soldiers also needed these women to fight for. He argues that Confederate soldiers fought to demonstrate their manhood as much as they fought to defend states’ rights and slavery. Confederate men treated the war as “a project grand enough to make them worthy of the power they are supposed to hold” as the leaders of a male-dominated, slaveholding society.5 Defining their manhood partially in relation to Southern womanhood, Confederate soldiers simultaneously fought for victory in battle and for the affection of their women. In turn, previous analyses of Civil War-era letters and media point towards a surge in hasty courtships and marriages at the beginning of the war, during soldiers’ periods of furlough, and at the end of the war.6


Why, then, did the author of this letter find that marriage ruined soldiers while a historian following the lives of six other Confederate soldiers concluded that love was precisely what they fought for? The letter writer’s identity would inform his perspective on marriage in the Civil War. Although the author of the letter left no signature, context suggests the author was Eugene Blackford, one of the sons of Lynchburg resident Mary Berkeley Minor Blackford. Mary Berkeley Minor Blackford and Mary L. Minor’s father, John B. Minor, were cousins.7 Since they were relatives, a letter exchange between Mary L. Minor and a son of Mary Berkeley seems plausible. The author of the letter mentioned that he spent much time as a child at Mount Airy, where Mary Berkeley’s step-cousin named Elizabeth G. Hill ran a school. Mary Berkeley’s sons spent considerable time at Mount Airy with her “Cousin Betty.”8 The location described at the top of the letter reads “Hd. Qrs. 5th Ala. Infty.”9 Eugene, the youngest Blackford son and the one closest in age to Mary L. Minor, had moved to Alabama after graduating from the University of Virginia. He joined the 5th Alabama Infantry during the Civil War.10 And indeed, Eugene and Mary frequently wrote to each other; of the transcriptions of Minor family letters available through the Jefferson’s University – the Early Life project, Eugene wrote over three dozen letters to Mary. Thus, Eugene Blackford most likely wrote this letter, and other letters written by Eugene Blackford to Mary L. Minor illuminate the discussion of Confederate attitudes towards marriage during the Civil War.11


In his written correspondence with Mary L. Minor, Eugene Blackford expressed his shock over the marriages taking place around him. While his letter in August demonstrated his dismay over the marriage of a fellow soldier, he also criticized the marriage of a women he knew. In a letter from November 15, 1864, Eugene complained about the marriage of “Miss Nannie.” He wrote, “what on earth can she want to be married for at this time I can’t conceive, She is very young, not 19. And has all her fun before her. I was never more astonished in all my life.”12 On December 6, 1864, the night of Miss Nannie’s wedding, he commented, “It seems very strange to me, and always will be incomprehensible. I shall tell her that there must surely be a panic prevailing in her neighbourhood, for none of the usual reasons exist for an early marriage in her case.”13 Since she did not have the “usual reasons” for an early marriage, Miss Nannie likely had parents or other relatives that could take care of her. If not family, she had some form of financial support or income. It is possible, however, that as in the case of other women, the fear of becoming an old maid pushed her quickly into marriage. Both altruistic and selfish reasons inspired Eugene’s disapproval of marriages. Eugene fumed at the idea of soldiers abandoning their comrades for any reason: cowardice, laziness, or desire to be with a sweetheart or wife.14 On the other hand, he complained that with Miss Nannie and all their peers getting married, he would have no one to see in Lynchburg.15


While Eugene did not have a wife during the war, he had what perhaps some soldiers lacked: a female friendship from which to draw encouragement, motivation, and affection. Women, Eugene determined, could withhold affection from soldiers to inflict a bit of pain. In the fall of 1864, Eugene faced a court-martial instigated by a few fellow soldiers jealous, according to Eugene, of “my reputation, acquired by a faithful discharge of my duty throughout this terrible campaign.”16 In a letter Eugene named the men in his brigade behind the “nefarious scheme” so that Mary would not give them any attention should she encounter them in Charlottesville or while visiting hospitals.17 After the war, in 1866, Eugene thanked Mary for “a friendship which has been of infinite service to me, in supplying the element to a great degree, which was utterly wanting in Camp life of course, viz – gentle influences. If mine were, as you so kindly say, ever brave & hopeful, your letters were none the less so, and I will know that the “Brave at Home” were not less deserving of praise than we were in the field; it required, too, no little true courage to write always encouragingly to those you loved in the army, knowing as you did that every word was urging them on to destruction apparently.”18 Eugene and Mary’s letter exchanges suggest that Eugene felt enough support on the emotional front to avoid marrying and “ruining” himself as a soldier during the war. Although Berry’s argument frames the Confederate soldiers’ metaphorical fight for love as a primary motive for military service, ties to friends and family back home—as well as politics—cannot be downplayed as motives of which the soldiers were quite conscious. For Eugene Blackford and many Southerners, marriage could wait.


Ultimately, federal and state government records indicate that over the long term, women’s fears of spinsterhood were not realized. The shortage of men prompted women to lower their courtship standards and marry men outside their social class or age group. For instance, the proportion of Virginian widows marrying men five or less years younger than themselves tripled.19 The number of women of marrying age during the Civil War to eventually marry did not significantly drop, even if some women had to delay marriage due to the war. In fact, an analysis of federal census records in the second half of the nineteenth century demonstrates that 92% of southern white women of marrying age during the Civil War married at some point in their lives.20 As for Eugene Blackford, in 1866, he became engaged to Rebecca Chapman Gordon.21 Of Rebecca, Eugene gushed, “You do not know how happy I am. I have never been so before in my life. I used to think I was happy during the war, and I was I suppose, but I never knew what it was until now – I must tell you in your ear, you understand, that R. is the most superior woman I ever knew.”22

Notes

1 “___ to Mary L Minor,” August 1, 1864, John B. Minor Papers, University of Virginia Library.
2 E. Susan Barber, “‘The White Wings of Eros’: Courtship and Marriage in Confederate Richmond,” in Southern Families at War: Loyalty and Conflict in the Civil War South, ed. Catherine Clinton (Cary, United States: Oxford University Press, 2000), 120.
3 Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 5; Tara Laver, “Love Is a Battlefield: Courtship and Marriage in the Civil War,” LSU Libraries News & Notes, February 13, 2014, https://news.blogs.lib.lsu.edu/2014/02/13/love-is-a-battlefield-courtship-and-marriage-in-the-civil-war/.
4 Laver, “Love Is a Battlefield: Courtship and Marriage in the Civil War”; Launcelot Minor Blackford, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: The Story of a Virginia Lady, Mary Berkeley Minor Blackford, 1802-1896, Who Taught Her Sons to Hate Slavery and to Love the Union (Harvard University Press, 1954), 240.
5 Stephen W. Berry II, All That Makes a Man: Love and Ambition in the Civil War South (Cary, United States: Oxford University Press, 2002), 23.
6 J. David Hacker, Libra Hilde, and James Holland Jones, “The Effect of the Civil War on Southern Marriage Patterns,” The Journal of Southern History 76, no. 1 (2010): 45.
7 “Blackford Family Papers, 1742-2003,” UNC University Libraries, 2006, 2017, 2018 1997, https://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/01912/.
8 “Blackford Family Papers, 1742-2003.”
9 “___ to Mary L Minor.”
10 “Blackford Family Papers, 1742-2003.”
11 On the other hand, the author of the letter commented that “Capt. Kirkpatrick’s company would have been the very place” for an acquaintance named Willy. After the war, Captain Thomas J. Kirkpatrick would open a law firm in Lynchburg with another Blackford son: Charles Minor Blackford. Nevertheless, the rest of the letter’s contents suggest that the author was Eugene Blackford.
Kevin Conley Ruffner, “Charles Minor Blackford (17 October 1833-10 March 1903) Biography,” Library of Virginia, 1998, http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Blackford_Charles_Minor.
12 Eugene Blackford, “Eugene Blackford to Mary L Minor,” November 15, 1864, John B. Minor Papers, University of Virginia Library.
13 Eugene Blackford, “Eugene Blackford to Mary L Minor,” December 6, 1864, John B. Minor Papers, University of Virginia Library.
14 “___ to Mary L Minor.”
15 Blackford, “Eugene Blackford to Mary L Minor,” December 6, 1864.
16 In the spring of 1864, Eugene had rejoined the army after a health-related leave of absence beginning in 1863.
Graham T. Dozier, A Gunner in Lee’s Army: The Civil War Letters of Thomas Henry Carter (UNC Press Books, 2014), 265; Blackford, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory, 233.
17 Blackford, “Eugene Blackford to Mary L Minor,” December 6, 1864.
18 Eugene Blackford, “Eugene Blackford to Mary L Minor,” September 18, 1866, John B. Minor Papers, University of Virginia Library.
19 Robert C. Kenzer, “Civil War Widows,” Encyclopedia Virginia, December 4, 2012, https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/civil_war_widows.
20 J. David Hacker, Libra Hilde, and James Holland Jones, “The Effect of the Civil War on Southern Marriage Patterns,” 42.
21 “Blackford Family Papers, 1742-2003.”
22 Blackford, “Eugene Blackford to Mary L Minor,” September 18, 1866.

References: 

“___ to Mary L Minor,” August 1, 1864. John B. Minor Papers, University of Virginia Library.
Barber, E. Susan. “‘The White Wings of Eros’: Courtship and Marriage in Confederate Richmond.” In Southern Families at War: Loyalty and Conflict in the Civil War South, edited by Catherine Clinton, 119–33. Cary, United States: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Berry II, Stephen W. All That Makes a Man: Love and Ambition in the Civil War South. Cary, United States: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Blackford, Eugene. “Eugene Blackford to Mary L Minor,” November 15, 1864. John B. Minor Papers, University of Virginia Library.
———. “Eugene Blackford to Mary L Minor,” December 6, 1864. John B. Minor Papers, University of Virginia Library.
———. “Eugene Blackford to Mary L Minor,” September 18, 1866. John B. Minor Papers, University of Virginia Library.
“Blackford Family Papers, 1742-2003.” UNC University Libraries, 2006, 2017, 2018 1997. https://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/01912/.
Blackford, Launcelot Minor. Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: The Story of a Virginia Lady, Mary Berkeley Minor Blackford, 1802-1896, Who Taught Her Sons to Hate Slavery and to Love the Union. Harvard University Press, 1954.
Dozier, Graham T. A Gunner in Lee’s Army: The Civil War Letters of Thomas Henry Carter. UNC Press Books, 2014.
Faust, Drew Gilpin. Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
J. David Hacker, Libra Hilde, and James Holland Jones. “The Effect of the Civil War on Southern Marriage Patterns.” The Journal of Southern History 76, no. 1 (2010): 39.
Kenzer, Robert C. “Civil War Widows.” Encyclopedia Virginia, December 4, 2012. https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/civil_war_widows.
Laver, Tara. “Love Is a Battlefield: Courtship and Marriage in the Civil War.” LSU Libraries News & Notes, February 13, 2014. https://news.blogs.lib.lsu.edu/2014/02/13/love-is-a-battlefield-courtship-and-marriage-in-the-civil-war/.
Ruffner, Kevin Conley. “Charles Minor Blackford (17 October 1833-10 March 1903) Biography.” Library of Virginia, 1998. http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Blackford_Charles_Minor.

JUEL Sources:

Eugene_Blackford_to_Mary_L_Minor_December_6_1864_Transcript
Eugene_Blackford_to_Mary_L_Minor_November_15_1864_Transcript
Eugene_Blackford_to_Mary_L_Minor_September_18_1866_Transcript
______to_Mary_L_Minor_August_1_1864_Transcript