"sissy" during the Civil War?

[Geoffrey Nunberg]

Margaret Mitchell defended her use of "sissy" in Gone with the Wind by saying that "I picked up that word and the line in which it was used from a letter, dated 1861, from a boy to his father, explaining why he had run away and joined an outfit in another section. 'I just didn't want to join any Zouaves. I'd have felt like a sissy with those red pants etc.'" (http://goo.gl/T7aNe) The OED gives "sissy" from 1846 for "a sister" but dates the use to refer to "an effeminate person; a coward" from 1887. Google Books doesn't seem to have anything for that use before 1885. Is the word older than that or was MItchell wrong?

http://goo.gl/T7aNe

Geoff

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