Women on the Homefront

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WOMEN ON THE HOMEFRONT

When the North and South mobilized for war in 1861, women on the homefront knew little of the four-year struggle that lay ahead. Imbued with a sense of patriotism, northern and southern women extended their domestic and maternal skills into new areas of work and civic involvement. Women also came to view the war years as a time of trial and hardship as mothers and wives struggled for their families' survival. Yet, regardless of their race, class, or regional identity, women met the challenges presented to them with strength and tenacity, and ultimately helped to shape the course of the conflict.

voluntary work

Women demonstrated their patriotism for their respective regions by participating in voluntary organizations. Northern women created associations to supply bandages, socks, food, medicine, and other necessities to soldiers. By April 1862, the U.S. government coordinated women's groups through the United States Sanitary Commission, which served as an umbrella organization for relief efforts and gave many women leadership opportunities. During her work with the Commission, Annie Wittenmyer rose through the ranks eventually to head the state agency in Iowa. Southern women organized their own associations to help aid the Confederacy. In their soldiers' aid societies and sewing circles, primarily established on the local level, women sewed uniforms, collected donations, and made food to send to troops. The Ladies Soldiers Aid Society of Natural Bridge, Virginia, established convalescent homes in local residences to care for ailing or wounded soldiers.

With women's energies focused on the war and family survival, few found time to concentrate on or had an interest in the woman's rights movement that had begun over a decade ago in the Northeast. To avoid seeming unpatriotic and in hopes of having their efforts rewarded after the war, activist women such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Susan B. Anthony concentrated on the abolition of slavery rather than woman's rights. In 1863, Anthony, Stanton, Ernestine Rose, and Lucy Stone organized the National Woman's Loyal League and sought signatures for a petition supporting the abolishment of slavery. Although the organization dissolved in 1864, their efforts helped move the focus of the war toward abolition. Moreover, the Loyal League trained women in organizational and campaigning skills that they later utilized in the female suffrage movement.

African-American women in the North also participated in the war effort while advancing the cause of freedom. Some black women collected donations for relief societies, gathered signatures on petitions protesting slavery,

and volunteered as teachers. The situation of "contrabands" (the term given to runaway slaves) in Union camps drew concern from black female activists. In Washington, D.C., women formed the Contraband Relief Society to help provide clothing and food to the many former slaves flooding Union camps.

paid employment

The departure of men to the battlefront as well as economic difficulties due to the war caused some women to seek work outside the home, which led to a feminization of occupations traditionally reserved for men. Efforts to supply soldiers with weapons and clothing created jobs for women in munitions factories, arsenals, and textile mills. The U.S. government also supplied jobs for young, single women, known as "Government Girls," who worked as clerks for a number of agencies. Southern women likewise sought paid positions with the Confederate and state governments. They served as seamstresses in the Confederate Clothing Bureau and printed currency in the Treasury Department while others worked as ordinance workers preparing ammunition.

Women increasingly turned to teaching as a way to supplement their family's income. Northern and southern schools hired female teachers long before the war began. After 1863, a few white and African-American women found jobs in areas of the South teaching in schools designed to educate former slaves. In the South, the absence of men on the home front combined with northern female teachers returning home when the war began caused a shortage of educators, and single, educated white women filled vacant positions.

Providing care for wounded and sick soldiers also created opportunities for paid employment. In the North, the Sanitary Commission assumed primary responsibility for the recruitment and placement of nurses. It appointed Dorothea Dix as "Superintendent of Nurses" to head these efforts. Fears over sexual impropriety between nurses and their male patients concerned Dix, and she responded by accepting only women who seemed plain in appearance and over thirty years of age. Nurses such as Clara Barton, who later founded the Red Cross, worked outside the strictures of the Commission and chose to go where hospitals and soldiers needed their services.

Organizing nurses in the South proved daunting as most hospital care depended on local or state efforts. Not until 1862 did the government allow women to work in official capacities as matrons, nurses, or orderlies in Confederate hospitals. Medical workers typically divided along class and racial lines with elite, white women taking on supervisory work and poor white or slave women relegated to menial tasks. Like those in the North, some southern women worked outside the parameters of the Confederate hospitals in "wayside hospitals" established in community buildings or homes.

home and family life

Women's home and family life changed considerably as fathers, husbands, and brothers left for war. In rural areas, white women took over managing the farm or plantation and continued their housework and cared for family members. Those from poorer families had little assistance in their farm labor and assumed care of financial matters as well as planting, cultivating, and harvesting the crops. Women from wealthy homes in the South assumed the responsibility of overseeing the plantation and relied on slaves to carry out the hard labor. In urban areas of the North and South, women ran their husbands' businesses, including keeping financial records, ordering supplies, and overseeing sales.

Those on the southern homefront knew firsthand the hardships that accompanied war since most military engagements took place in the region. The Union's naval blockade in 1861 cut much of the South off from both essential supplies and luxury goods. Roaming bands of both Union and Confederate deserters stole crops and livestock while Union officials confiscated food to supply the army. White women of the elite and poorer classes responded to material deprivations by turning to the home to produce necessities such as cloth. Without the presence of men in their homes, women found themselves in the role of protector against soldiers seeking to rob homes of valuables, food, and other items.

The war exacted large economic and emotional costs for both northern and southern women who struggled to provide for their families. During the war, patriotism upheld the ideal of female sacrifice. Nevertheless, economic hardships and food shortages brought many women to view the war as a burden. Poor women in the urban South, suffering from starvation and malnourishment, informally organized demonstrations to demand food for their families. The Bread Riots that erupted in cities like Richmond, Virginia, and Mobile, Alabama became public symbols of their discontent with the war. In the North, women of the working class also protested against what they saw as unfair conscription laws. In the 1863 Draft Riots in New York City, women participated in a six-day protest against draft policies that allowed those with financial means to avoid military service.

slave women

The war caused dramatic changes in the work and family life of slave women. Many female slaves spent the duration of the war separated from their husbands, whom the Confederate army impressed to use as laborers on military-related projects. Slave women's workload in the fields and in the home increased as they attempted to fill their husband's duties in their absence. Shortages on the homefront especially disrupted the lives of slave women. Slave owners reduced the provisions such as food, medicine, and clothing that they allotted to slaves. As a result, bondwomen struggled to combat hunger and disease in their families. Moreover, responsibility for household production fell mainly to female slaves who spent many hours spinning, weaving, and making soap in addition to their demanding farm work.

Female slaves took advantage of the chaotic nature of the southern homefront and challenged their owner's authority. Some used subtle forms of resistance by slowing their work pace, damaging tools, or refusing to perform certain tasks. The presence of Union troops in or near southern communities brought hope for many slave women who escaped bondage with their children. Once behind Union lines, however, they confronted arduous conditions. Disorganization plagued Union camps as officials scrambled to accommodate the growing population of slave contraband. Many soldiers grew resentful toward black women since their presence taxed vital resources such as food and medical supplies. Freed women, however, found ways to support themselves and their families by working as laundresses and agricultural laborers for the Union army.

From one viewpoint, the Civil War provided women, rich and poor, white and black, northern and southern, avenues into new economic, social, and political activities. While the material and human costs of war challenged women's abilities, they provided for and protected the home and family in the absence of their male counterparts. Moreover, the skills women gained in voluntary and paid work helped to push the doors of opportunity wider for the generation of women to follow. Nevertheless, the majority found the war a sorrowful and physically challenging experience. Whatever feelings they embraced, most hoped or prayed for a quick resolution.

bibliography

Attie, Jeanie. Patriotic Toil: Northern Women and the American Civil War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998.

Clinton, Catherine. Tara Revisited: Women, War, and the Plantation Legend. New York: Abbeville Press, 1995.

Faust, Drew Gilpin. Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slave-holding South in the American Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

Leonard, Elizabeth. Yankee Women: Gender Battles in the Civil War. New York: Norton, 1994.

Rable, George. Civil Wars: Women and the Crisis of Southern Nationalism. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989.

Schwalm, Leslie. A Hard Fight for We: Women's Transition from Slavery to Freedom in South Carolina. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997.

Victoria E. Ott