6 - Catharsis and Conclusion

Summary

This chapter recounts women’s reactions to the siege and subsequent fall of Fort Sumter and their short-lived hope that it would be the sole conflict that resulted from secession. Their cathartic moment of joy quickly evaporated when soldiers departed for Virginia, leaving them once again in a tormented state of lonely anticipation. Until the events of First Bull Run, men’s letters home expressed a jovial mood. This atmosphere changed drastically when loved ones began to die in combat. Thus, while Fort Sumter may be considered the first shot of the Civil War, it took First Bull Run for South Carolinians to realize the urgency of the conflict and finally, completely, enter the Civil War. The conclusion traces the lives of the elite white women profiled through the Civil War and its aftermath. Many of them earnestly subscribed to the Lost Cause myth after the war, writing rosy memoirs of antebellum days or joining Confederate memorial organizations. That their prewar predictions of doom and destruction do not line up with their postwar remembrances further proves that the Lost Cause mythology is divorced from the reality of the South after the Civil War.