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“Economy Rules the Day:”
The Civil War Sacrifices of Judith Walker McGuire
by Tim Sheehan

Table of Contents | Introduction | Conclusion | Endnotes | Printable HTML version | Images | Related Web Resources

Adjusting to Life After the War

McGuire’s experience in teaching must have been a success. After the war, the Reverend McGuire and his wife opened in Tappahannock, Virginia the Female Boarding and Day School. The Brockenbrough family provided a Georgian home located on the Rappahannock River to house the school. Advertisements for the school listed “Mr. And Mrs. McGuire” as the proprietors. After her husband’s death in 1869, Judith McGuire continued operating the school until 1880. The McGuires offered English, French, Latin, History, Algebra, and Geography. Judith McGuire taught the latter. One student felt she knew “a good deal about Geography but Mrs. McGuire seemed to think that I knew very little.” The student felt that McGuire was “a very poor teacher” and “deceitful.” The student concluded her opinion of McGuire by stating, “I think that book of hers has put her beside herself, she is as proud of it as she well can be, always talking about it.”(75) The book referred to is Diary of a Southern Refugee during the War. Although the first three editions of the Diary, printed in 1867, 1868, and 1889, listed “A Lady of Virginia” as the author, Judith McGuire obviously let her authorship be known.(76)

McGuire also penned General Robert E. Lee, The Christian Soldier, a biography published in 1873. In her description of secession, she deviated from the main topic (Robert E. Lee) and described the war’s effect on women. “None but those who witnessed the efforts made by the Southern women in every State of the Confederacy, can realize all that was done and suffered by them in behalf of a cause which seemed to them so just and righteous.” In this passage, McGuire listed all the sacrifices and contributions women gave to the war, all but the need to seek outside employment.(77) She mentioned her Subsistence Department job in the Diary but only as an economic necessity that impeded her contributions to the soldiers.

©2005-2012 Tim Sheehan tim@historynut.info

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This page last updated 1 January 2012