Question

Describe the varied roles that women experienced during the U.S. Civil War.

Book: Born for Liberty by Sara M. Evans

Answer 1

The Civil War was a turning point for women, as well as their role in society. Prior to the Civil War, job was in the home for most women. Cooking and cleaning for women was required to make the home comfortable for the family and presentable to visitors. However, with the start of the Civil War, several women volunteered to help in the war effort. They worked in a variety of capacities, from cooking to nursing to real frontline fighting. Women created societies to assist soldiers from both the Union and the Confederate. They planted gardens; canned food; cooked; sewed shirts, blankets and socks; and made the troops laundry.

The government created the U.S. in 1861, at the insistence of women activists. Healthcare commission to supply food , medicine and supplies to Union troops, such as blankets and socks. Although commission officials were men, women were the group's backbone and served directly for and on the soldiers' behalf. The materials were gathered and distributed to Union soldiers. They had the intention to give one care package a month to each soldier. Conditions on the battlefield were far from sanitary, and disease spread rapidly. The women volunteers were teaching military leaders how to keep the soldiers on the frontlines clean and healthy.

The women also cared for the wounded as they returned from the battle. Commission members also raised money for Union soldiers. They held Sanitary Fairs to collect supplies and funds for the soldiers. At the Northwest Soldiers' Fair in Chicago in 1863 veterans raised more than $70,000 for Union soldiers. It was a massive sum of money back in 1863.

For some women, it was not enough to be employed as nurses. As many as 400 women dressed up as men for enlisting and fighting for both the Union and the Confederacy, facing incarceration if captured. In much of the same motives women fought as men: out of a sense of patriotism, to help abolish slavery, to raise money and to avoid a difficult or unsatisfactory home life. Because the women were disguised as men, they carried out the same duties as the men. They served, cooked, acted as spies on the frontlines, and nursed the wounded.

Enemy intelligence was a crucial tool in the war, and hundreds of women spied on Union and Confederacy. Harriet Tubman, best known on the Underground Railroad as a "conductor," worked as a Union cook and nurse before she was asked to organize former South Carolina slaves into a spy network. Using information she had gained from the spies, she led a military expedition in South Carolina that liberated over 700 slaves and destroyed a Confederate arms depot.