Feeling a Little Patriotic About Quilts

I'm feeling patriotic, or at least I was yesterday when I took advantage of my right to vote. Someone commented on the blog about the small part of my Lincoln's Platform quilt I showed and asked to see the whole quilt. It's one of my favorite quilts from Remembering Adelia.

Lincoln's political platform during the 1860 presidential election (and also his bid for re-election in 1864) called for an end to slavery and a reuniting of the country that was torn apart at the time. 

Next year marks the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War in the United States. Adelia's diary portrays some of the thoughts that were going through women's minds at that time and I tried to include some quilts in the book that may have been popular around the time of the war. I wrote my next book, The Civil War Sewing Circle, with that in the back of my mind and it was fun to immerse myself in some of the research about women and the impact that their quilting had on the war. I've been influenced by Lincoln's legacy  in making a few of my little quilts before and though I am not a quilt historian, it's always fascinating to find out more about the connection between quilt pattern names and the history behind them.

From the Library of Congress

Most of you know that there has been an abundance of stories written about quilting and the Civil War, and for years we loved to imagine women frantically sewing quilts with secrets hidden within, helping slaves escape. Truth is, we  now know that these stories are considered myths that have been for the most part disputed by historians.

From the Library of Congress

   

For instance, according to myths, the Underground Railroad or Jacob's Ladder quilt pattern, with its light and dark contrasting squares set in an ascending formation, was said to point slaves to a safe path to freedom.

From my book  American Doll Quilts

The Log Cabin quilt has its own mystique surrounding it. According to stories, safe houses for escaping slaves were supposedly those that displayed a Log Cabin quilt with a black center and when these quilts were hung in a window or on a clothesline, slaves could be assured of a hiding place on their journey. Quilt historians say that the first documented Log Cabin quilt was dated after the Civil War and could not have been used during the time of the conflict and was probably named as a tribute to President Lincoln's boyhood home (a log cabin) or as a symbol of the Union's loyalty to him.  

From Prairie Children & Their Quilts

Thus, while our imaginations love these stories of quilts and slaves, historians tell us that there is simply no evidence that quilts played a role in helping slaves escape to freedom. We now know that the stories are probably fiction and many of the blocks were renamed later, after the war. In actuality, instead of sewing codes into cloth, thousands of women were sewing frantically in their sewing circles to make bedding and clothing for the many soldiers who desperately needed these items.

  From American Doll Quilts

Whatever history tells us,  and whatever disappointment we might feel at finding out the truth about the actual role that quilts played, it shouldn't discourage us from making quilts like these with names associated with the war as a tribute to Lincoln, the war, or the men and women who played such an important role in this stage of American history.