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Essay On Family Life During Civil War

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Family Life During Civil War As a pivotal point in our nation’s history, the civil war holds a special fascination in the land and minds of the American people. It was a war entirely fought by Americans, often dividing families and even brothers against brothers. The American civil war was unforgettable. It was fought between the United States of America and the Southern slave states of the nearly formed confederate state of America under Jefferson Davis. The Civil War made really a tragic long lasting effect on a family unit of that period. During Civil War, families on both sides of the war had to bear a pain of personal loss. Husbands and fathers and sons died not in hundreds but in thousands of numbers in both the North and South …show more content…

White families in Virginia first confronted the war’s impact with the enlistments of their male kin. To provide food and protect families, men were pulled away from their loved ones to serve in the confederate army. As one Virginia solider put his duty in the war encompassed “the defense of our country, our liberty and the protection of our parent, wives, children, and all that is dear to a man” (encylopediavirginia.org). 50 percent of the male enlisted from Virginia tried to help both families and the confederacy. But it was of no use. Wives, daughters, sisters, and other female kin assumed much of the work normally pursued by men- managing plantation, harvesting crops, running business. This pressure took toll on women. “We felt like clinging to Walter and holding him back”, wrote one Virginia woman in reaction to a family member’s enlistment. “I was sick of war, sick of the butchery, the anguish” (encylopediavirginia.org). Virginia Civilians After a Battle Often soldiers tries to maintain their role in family through home letters, but their correspondence proved an imperfect surrogate when the mail, disrupted by war, was slow in coming. Some women also tried to bring their men home by filing petition with the confederate secretary of war for a man’s exemption, or by urging a soldier to desert the army, which were often unsuccessful and

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