Women\'s Roles During the Civil

Women's Roles During The Civil War

There are myriad accounts in the literature as to how the women's traditional roles were impacted during the United States Civil War, and how women responded to the violence, uncertainty, and absence of their spouses. In this paper some of those accounts will be presented.

The Literature on Women and the Civil War

Henry Walker writes that prior to the conflict women's roles were already undergoing serious change, and the war "offered and women embraced even greater opportunities for change" (Walker, 2000, p. 175). Of course many of the men in the South went off to war, leaving the women behind. Walker references other scholarship in asserting that "due to a lack of male companionship, a generation of Southern women was obliged to become self-sustaining economically (175). It was also true that the "internal dynamics of many Southern marriages" were altered in profound ways and moreover, women as a rule gained "greater autonomy during the war" and legislation that was passed after the war bears that out, Walker continues on page 176.

Many Southern women were "disillusioned with men" (who went off to war) for their "failure to protect hearth and home," Walker explains (176). Calling it a "grave weakness" on the part of men, Walker asserts that there is a widely held perception that because the men abandoned their homes and families, Southern women began "asserting their own self-interest" (176). One classic example of how a woman's role was changed by the war can be pointed out through the Clayton family of Alabama. This is a family that had been a "wealthy planter family" for generations; they had 42 slaves and a huge cotton plantation, Walker writes (177). And Henry Clayton was very active in the effort to "increase the number of proslavery voters in Kansas," so he led an expedition -- leading more than a hundred "southern emigrants" into Kansas so it would become a slave state. Did Victoria Clayton stay at home in Alabama while her husband was out promoting slavery in Kansas? No. Certainly not all Southern women stayed home and tended children and crops. She went with her husband, and had to sleep "on the ground, eat from tin trays, bathe when she could, and do without her usual comforts" (Walker, 179). To compound the tough life she was living on the road, she was three months pregnant. She was armed with a pistol to protect the women and children along on the expedition.

Later, when Henry went into battle for the South, Victoria's efforts for the Confederate army were valiant, as she produced (on the Alabama plantation, with help from her slaves and local women she hired) "a bounty of shirts, pants, and socks for the army" (Walker, 185). The role she played showed remarkable resilience; she raised her family, raised sweet potatoes (they served as an adequate coffee substitute when the Union army blockaded many staples like coffee), and used fruit from their orchard to make wine and brandy (Walker, 185).

Meanwhile, Thomas E. Rodgers' article in the peer-reviewed journal, Indiana Magazine of History reports that "the vast majority of married women" in rural west-central Indiana "had their husbands at home throughout the war" (Rodgers, 2001, p. 112). This fact reflected that most families in this region of Indiana were Democrats (then the conservative party). The women whose husbands did serve the pro-Union cause (often Republicans) did not necessarily take over the farm work and other "male tasks" on the farm. Instead, the work was done with the "same kind of neighborhood and extended-kin support" that was in use prior to the Civil War (Rodgers, 112).

Also, many soldiers wrote letters home "…virtually micromanaging their farms from the front," Rodgers continues (113). Wives received a "steady flow of letters" with specific advice not only on how to run the farm, but on "how their children were to behave and be taught," Rodgers explained (113). And moreover, male farm laborers were available to harvest crops, and the women either paid them to harvest the wheat, or she gave them "a percentage of the crop" (Rodgers, 113). As for urban women in Indiana during the Civil War, Rodgers explains that letters between wives and soldiers showed "gossip about the local social scene" and politics, along with romantic passages (114). But like the rural wives left at home, wives of soldiers from the cities received letters with "…a range of instructions" about "running the household, rearing the children" and educating them too (Rodgers, 114).

Women in Indiana -- whose husbands were at war -- engaged in public affairs to a greater degree than they had when husbands were home, Rodgers explains (115). In fact the most common activity for women (urban and rural) was joining "Ladies Aid Societies," groups that provided bandages, clothing, food items, and other needed commodities to Hoosier soldiers in the Union army. Also, the role of women in Indiana involved "fundraising activities for the soldiers and their families"; they produced plays, pageants and other fundraising entertainment, Rodgers continued (116).