In Marital Cruelty in Antebellum America, Robin C. Sager probes the struggles of aggrieved spouses shedding light on the nature of marriage and violence in the United States in the decades prior to the Civil War. Analyzing over 1,500 divorce records that reveal intimate details of marriages in conflict in Virginia, Texas, and Wisconsin from 1840--1860, Sager offers a rare glimpse into the private lives of ordinary Americans shaken by accusations of cruelty.At a time when the standar...

Texas Women: Their Histories, Their Lives engages current scholarship on women in Texas, the South, and the United States. It provides insights into Texas’s singular geographic position, bordering on the West and sharing a unique history with Mexico, while analyzing the ways in which Texas stories mirror a larger American narrative. The biographies and essays illustrate an uncommon diversity among Texas women, reflecting experiences ranging from those of dispossessed enslaved wome...