Enlivened with profiles and vignettes of some of the remarkable people whose histories inform this study, Stepping Lively in Place shows how free, single women navigated life in a busy slave-based river-port town before and during the Civil War, and how these women transitioned during Reconstruction, emancipation, and thereafter. It examines how free, single women in one city (including prostitutes, entrepreneurs, and elite plantation ladies) coped with life unencumbered, or unprotected, by husbands. The book pays close attention to the laws affecting southern gender and...

Enlivened with profiles and vignettes of some of the remarkable people whose histories inform this study, Stepping Lively in Place shows how free, single women navigated life in a busy slave-based river-port town before and during the Civil War, and how these women transitioned during Reconstruction, emancipation, and thereafter. It examines how free, single women in one city (including prostitutes, entrepreneurs, and elite plantation ladies) coped with life unencumbered, or unprotected, by husbands. The book pays close attention to the laws affecting southern gender and...