Review Essays

During Reconstruction, a Brutal ‘War on Freedom’
The Washington Post January 25, 2023 | Review of Kidada E. Williams, I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War against Reconstruction

The Two Wars : The battle over who would profit from the Civil War
The Nation November 2, 2022 | Review of Roger Lowenstein, Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War

Political in Nature : Is Impeachment Only About Getting a Conviction?
The Nation February 17, 2020 | Review of Brenda Wineapple, The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation

This is What America Means : Jill Lepore and the Prehistory of Now
Times Literary Supplement September 24, 2019 | Review of Jill Lepore, These Truths: A History of the United States and This America: The Case for the Nation

Plunder of Black Life : The Problem of Connecting the History of Slavery to the Economics of the Present
Times Literary Supplement May 17, 2017 | Review of Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman, eds., Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development | Podcast

Who Freed the Slaves? : For Some Time Now, the Answer has not Been the Abolitionists
The Nation September 13, 2016 | Review of Manisha Sinha, The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition

Rich Pickings
Times Literary Supplement April 10, 2015 | Review of Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton

Civil Strife : Notes from the Struggle to Find New Narratives of the War Between the States
Times Literary Supplement February 15, 2013 (cover story: “Lincoln memorials”)

The Sisters’ War?
The Women’s Review of Books September 2000 | Review of Elizabeth D. Leonard, Daring of the Soldier: Women of the Civil War Armies and Elizabeth Young, Disarming the Nation: Women's Writing and the American Civil War

Steel Magnolias
The Women’s Review of Books March 1997 | Review of Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the Civil War and LeeAnn Whites, The Civil War as a Crisis in Gender: Augusta, Georgia, 1860-1890

Magazine & Newspaper

The Confederacy Was an Antidemocratic, Centralized State | The Atlantic, June 21, 2020

Can History Prepare Us for the Trump Presidency? | Politico, January 22, 2017

The U.S. Won the Civil War | New York Times, July 2, 2013

Why Do We Love Our Civil War? | Civil War Times, October 2012

“Bread or Blood!” : Armed Women Took to the Streets to Protest Against Confederate Injustice | Civil War Times, June 2011

The Rebel Constitution (PDF version available here ) | New York Times, March 10, 2011

America’s Worst Idea : On the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War, Can We Finally Admit the Truth about Why the South Lost? | American History, December 2010

“Her War,” Women’s history column in America’s Civil War

Just How Much Can a Girl Get Away With? | July 2012
Fighting Sarah Thompson | September 2012
No More Driver’s Lash for Me | November 2012
Bread and Butter Issues | January 2013
Women on the Warpath | March 2013
Emancipation Jolts a Slave and Her Mistress | May 2013
Slavery, Sex and Sin | November 2013
Emancipation, yes – but Women’s Rights? | July 2013
Clara Judd and the Laws of War | September 2013
First Feminist Angelina Grimke | January 2014
Harriet Jacobs' Blunt Biography | March 2014
‘In the Company’ with Susie King Taylor | May 2014
Army Wives’ Emancipation Complications | July 2014
Chivalry Dies in Atlanta | September 2014
Petition of the Twenty Thousand | January 2015
Southern Women and Their New Normal | May 2015
The Politics of Ruin | September 2015

Academic Articles &
Book Chapters

“Enemy Women and the Laws of War in the American Civil War,” Law and History Review, August 2017, Vol. 35, No. 3.

 “The Confederacy: Introduction” in Disunion: A History of the Civil War (New York, 2016)

 “Women Numerous and Armed: Politics and Policy on the Confederate Home Front,” in Women’s America: Refocusing the Past, 8th ed. Linda K. Kerber et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015)

“Confederate Reckoning: The People and Their Politics on the Homefront,” in Scott Reynolds Nelson and Carol Sheriff, The American Civil War at Home (Richmond, 2014), pp. 48-53

“Civil Wars - Ours and Theirs,” in Dixie Redux: Essays in Honor of Sheldon Hackney, Raymond Arsenault and Orville Vernon Burton, eds. (Montgomery, AL: NewSouth Books, 2013), pp. 70-79

“Women Numerous and Armed: The Richmond Food Riots in Comparative Perspective,” OAH Magazine of History, Vol. 27, No. 2 (April 2013): pp. 35-39

“Reckoning with the Confederacy,” South Atlantic Quarterly Vol. 112, No. 3 (Summer 2013): pp. 481-488

“War, Gender and Emancipation in the Civil War South,” in Bill Blair and Karen Younger, eds., Lincoln’s Proclamation: Emancipation Reconsidered (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), pp. 121-150

“Women Numerous and Armed: Gender and the Politics of Subsistence in the Civil War South,” in Gary Gallagher and Joan Waugh, eds., Wars Within a War: Controversy and Conflict over the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), pp. 1-26

“The Citizen Wife,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Winter 2005): pp. 1659-1670

“Producing Dependence: Women, Work and Yeoman Households in Low Country South Carolina,“ in Michelle Gillespie and Susanna Delfino, eds., Neither Lady Nor Slave: Working Women of the Old South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), pp. 55-74

“The Soldiers’ Wife: White Women, the State and the Politics of Protection in the Confederacy,” in Alison M. Parker and Stephanie Cole, eds., Women and the Unstable State in Nineteenth Century America (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 2000), pp. 15-36

“Citizens, Soldiers’ Wives and ‘Hily Hope Up’ Slaves: The Problem of Political Obligation in the Civil War South,” in Nancy Bercaw, ed., Gender and the Southern Body Politic (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000), pp. 95-124

“Piedmont Mill Workers and the Politics of History,” Labour/Le Travail, Vol. 29 (Spring 1992): pp. 229-237

“The Two Faces of Republicanism: Gender and Proslavery Politics in Antebellum South Carolina,” Journal of American History, Vol. 78, No. 4 (March 1992): pp. 1245-1262      

“The Politics of Yeoman Households in South Carolina,” in Catherine Clinton and Nina Silber, eds., Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 22-38