Southern Women In The Civil War Essay

Women in the Civil War were important because they played important roles. They played as nurses, spies, and some even disguised themselves as soldiers. The women could only play one of these roles. For example they can only be either a spy or nurse or a soldier. They can’t be two like a spy and a nurse.

However, not only did women work in the fields they also produce goods, and services; such as clothing, personal hygiene items, and food to be sold in order to build -up their coffer’s through that of their overabundance of supplies. This impact took place during the 1700’s and beyond, when women from all aspects of life filled these domestic jobs while working for very little pay; getting absolutely nothing at all for their work. During the 1800’s, however, this all changed for women and soon these women we’re categorized as being unskilled workers this causing tremendous consequences for these women; especially when the men return for war and once again took on the gender roles to which women were now a custom too.

Women wanted to be able to do more in the war. They tried to find ways to work

With the center of production moving from households to mass-production, women in America had to alter their way of life. A great number of women followed labor opportunities to the mills, factories, and workshops. For the first time in history, large numbers of women left their homes to participate in the public world. “Mill Girls” were typically young, unmarried women who lived together in boarding houses provided by the factory for which they worked. Lucy Larcom recalls,

A “True Women’s” life before the war was to make a clean, comfortable, nurturing home for her

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).

Despite the low position women held in society, they participated in any way they could during the war. When their husbands were away fighting, they took over their husbands’ positions as weavers, carpenters, blacksmiths or shipbuilders. Others transformed their homes into hospitals for the wounded, as explained in Document 2. Document 2 also describes how hundreds of

Women played an important role during the American Civil War but it wasn't until 100 years afterwards that they received recognition. Even today history books skip over the important roles women had during the Civil War. Wives, mothers, daughters, and grandmothers impacted the War both at home and on the battlefield. Their lives changed in many ways with the onset of the Civil War. Women took on many different roles that helped their side during the Civil War.

During the Civil War, women took a unique role in America,by essentially taking the place of the men who went to war. When the men left, home life changed completely. Women now had to do many of the things that the men would have taken care of around the house, as well as the things that the women would normally do themselves. During the war, however, some women got more of a taste for life outside the home than others. They had to reconfigure themselves in the world and find where they belonged without the aid of men.

The American Civil War was a time of great trial and tribulation for the American people. It forced individuals to choose a cause, and many families were torn asunder as they chose opposing sides. As the men marched off to war a small group of women prepared to wage a different kind of warfare. These women became an overlooked but deadly force using espionage and womanly wiles to gather military intelligence for their cause. They used whatever means they had at their disposal to enter into the confidence of men within the opposing side and gain their trust. Women during this period were often overlooked as insignificant and stationary. Women were meant to stay within the home and care for their families needs. However, these extraordinary women rose to answer a more imminent need. These brave women had a profound influence on their cause.

Women in the 1860’s during the Civil War would dress in uniform also cut their hair and pass as men to fight along their male comrades.Other women went to be nurses for the North and South there were also women who would stay home and take their husband's role it shows women worked hard to provide for their families and for themselves.

Many women were able to do things like getting jobs that they had never been able to do before. A member of the Australian Women’s Army Service talks about how with no one to stop them, “young women without domestic responsibilities who were free to enlist did so”. Before the war, women were kept in their place as housewives, their main purposes being to please their husbands and to raise children. They were constantly taught that they were nothing without a man, and how only he was smart enough to make decisions. Dorothy Hewett even notes, “Many marriages broke down because the women just couldn’t take this man coming back and telling them what to do, as he’d always done in the past.”

“Before the Civil War, laws and traditions restricted women’s choices.” Women had to live by specific rules that kept them from living their lives before the war took place. They were controlled by men and forced to go by rules that society had set for them. However, after the war, everything changed. They had much more control over their lives.

Many women took jobs that men did not want such as cooking, cleaning and running the household. Women also got jobs in textile mills, working machinery that made clothing. Many women were talented at making clothes for the family. This kept up with the latest style and was much less expensive. With the WPA, Works Progress Administration, nearly 300,000 women were working with approximately 9,000 different sewing units. Women were sometimes left alone to run the household when the father left for his own reasons. It’s been said that “Women got all her life in her arms. Man got it all in his head.” meaning that women

Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust chronicles the transition of women’s roles and attitudes in the South during the Civil War. The work of Faust does not only deal with the roles of women but also the changing attitudes of men in relation to the status of women in the South. The war itself was integral in the transformation of women and would bring about these changes for the better but would be painful for many who were raised in the subservient culture of southern society. With attitudes and the environment of a world without men, women were forced to change as were the patriarchs of the society who were no longer able to cling to outdated gender roles. Faust points