MPC Member Publications

This database contains a listing of population studies publications written by MPC Members. Anyone can add a publication by an MPC student, faculty, or staff member to this database; new citations will be reviewed and approved by MPC administrators.

Full Citation

Title: The Effect of the Civil War on Southern Marriage Patterns

Citation Type: Journal Article

Publication Year: 2010

Abstract: This article relies on samples of the federal decennial censuses from 1850 through 1880 to compare white marriage patterns before and after the American Civil War. Although this study presents marriage estimates for all regions, the discussion focuses on the South, which suffered three times the rate of military deaths of the North. The results suggest that a modest marriage squeeze affected southern white women who reached marriage age during the war. Faced with a shortage of potential spouses in the postwar period, some women postponed marriage or chose less appropriate husbands. Diaries, letters, and memoirs of southern women supplement the quantitative analysis and document womens wartime fears of spinsterhood. However, the results of this study demonstrate that womens feared spinsterhood failed to materialize over the long term. The vast majority (approximately 92 percent) of southern white women who came of marriage age during the war married at some point in their lives. Indeed, the marriage squeeze on southern women apparent in the 1870 census is no longer evident in the 1880 census.

User Submitted?: No

Authors: Hacker, David J

Periodical (Full): Journal of Southern History

Issue: 1

Volume: 76

Pages: 39-70

Countries:

IPUMS NHGIS NAPP IHIS ATUS Terrapop