Heartsick and Astonished
Divorce in Civil War-Era West Virginia
Title Details
Pages: 304
Illustrations: 9 b&w images
Trim size: 6.000in x 9.000in
Formats
Paperback
Pub Date: 05/15/2023
ISBN: 9-780-8203-6428-5
List Price: $32.95
Web PDF
Pub Date: 05/15/2023
ISBN: 9-780-8203-6430-8
List Price: $32.95
Hardcover
Pub Date: 05/15/2023
ISBN: 9-780-8203-6427-8
List Price: $114.95
EPUB
Pub Date: 05/15/2023
ISBN: 9-780-8203-6429-2
List Price: $32.95
Related Subjects
HISTORY / United States / 19th Century
HISTORY / United States / State & Local / South (AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, VA, WV)
Heartsick and Astonished
Divorce in Civil War-Era West Virginia
Divorce cases from the mid-nineteenth century shed light on ethnic, racial, and class issues
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Heartsick and Astonished features twenty-seven divorce cases from mid-nineteenth century America. More than dry legal documents, these cases provide a captivating window into marital life—and strife—in the border South during the tumultuous years before, during, and after the Civil War. Allison Dorothy Fredette has brought these primary documents to light, revealing the inner thoughts, legal hardships, and day-to-day struggles of these average citizens.
In Wheeling, West Virginia, the seat of Ohio County, courtrooms bore witness to men and women from various ethnic, racial, and class backgrounds who shared shockingly intimate details of their lives and relationships. Some tried desperately to defend their masculinity or femininity; others hoped to restore their reputations to the legal system and to their community.
In an era of uncertainty—when the country was torn in two, when the Wheeling community became the capital of a new state, and when activists across the country began to push for women’s rights in the household and family—the divorce cases of ordinary couples reveal changing attitudes toward marriage, gender, and legal separation in a booming border city perched on the edge of the South.
—Yvonne Pitts, author of Family, Law and Inheritance in America: A Social and Legal History of Nineteenth Century Kentucky
—Jon-Erik Gilot, Emerging Civil War