In Stepdaughters of History, scholar Catherine Clinton reflects on the roles of women as historical actors within the field of Civil War studies and examines the ways in which historians have redefined female wartime participation. Despite recent growing attention, white and black women’s contributions remain shrouded in myth and sidelined in traditional historical narratives. Clinton dismantles the prevailing attitudes that consign women to the footnotes of Civil War texts. Clinton highlights debates which seek to demolish demeaning and limiting stereotypes of southern women as simpering belles, stoic Mammies, Rebel spitfires, or sultry spies. Such caricatures mask the more concrete and compelling struggles within the Confederacy. New historical evidence has given rise to fresh insights, including revisionist literature on women’s overt and covert participation in the Civil War.