The US Civil War, Gender Ideology, and Women’s Experiences

I. Civil War and gender ideology

War framed as a conflict between competing gender ideologies and household systems
- Northern depictions of the South
  - Slavery corrupted the sanctity of the family
  - Men portrayed as intemperate, lacking manly self-control
  - Women depicted as spiteful, unruly
- Southern views of the North
  - Believed that Northerners blurred the boundaries between the sexes
  - Women: abrasive, masculine
  - Men: effeminate or cold, only concerned with money
  - Associated abolitionism with attacks on marriage

II. Attempts by Northerners to “domesticate” the war

Military mobilization threatened to undermine Northern gender ideals
- Removed young men from the uplifting realm of feminine influence
- Notion that soldiers would be corrupted; that they would become hardened
In response, popular culture and volunteer efforts constantly emphasized the emotional bonds between soldiers and civilians
- Sheet music: “Just Before Battle, Mother” and “Who Will Care for Mother Now?”
Women performed many tasks the government would assume in later wars

III. Northern women’s war work

Could draw on a well-established tradition of female reform
- But the Civil War led to an unprecedented level of benevolent activity
  - Soldiers’ aid societies (“bonnet brigades”)
    - Made uniforms, clothes, foodstuffs, etc.
    - Personalized their donations • Emphasis on “sanitary” measures
- Woman’s Central Association of Relief (1860)
  - Inspired by Florence Nightingale’s efforts to reduce disease during the Crimean War
  - Revealed growing concerns with efficiency, organization
  - Became part of the U.S. Sanitary Commission (1861)

IV. Nurses and hospital workers

Some 20,000 women worked in Union and Confederate hospitals combined
- In the North, Dorothea Dix was named Superintendent of Army Nurses
  - Only woman to hold a federal appointment
- Originally, she intended to personally approve all nurses
  - But in the end, nursing occurred on an ad-hoc basis
- Women rarely worked on or near the battlefield
  - But nursing was still hazardous
1892 Army Nurse Pension Act
- First time the US recognized a group of women recognized as military veterans

Dorothea Dix on attributes and qualities women needed for nursing: “No young ladies should be sent at all, but some who are sober, earnest, self-sacrificing, and self-sustained; who can bear the presence of suffering and exercise self-control of speech and manner; who can be calm, gentle, quiet, active and steadfast in duty. All nurses are required to be plain looking women. Their dress much be brown or black, with no bows, no curls, no jewelry, and no hoop skirts.”

V. Hannah Ropes

Born in 1809; daughter/sister of prominent New England lawyers
Mother of four (two died in childhood) whose husband abandoned the family
- She finally divorced him for abandonment in 1860
In 1862, when she was in her 50s, she became the matron of Georgetown Union Hotel Hospital
- By then, she was already a published author who had long been active in abolitionism
  - Six Months in Kansas by a Lady (1856)
- Volunteered in 1862 after her son had enlisted; saw her patients as her “sons”
- Influenced Nightengale’s Notes on Nursing
- Did not hesitate to report corrupt and inefficient officials; went straight to the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, who acted on the information she provided
Supervised Louisa May Alcott, who worked at the hospital for 6 weeks
- Alcott published Hospital Sketches, based on her experiences (1863)
Both Alcott and Ropes contracted typhoid fever in January 1863
Ropes died on January 20, 1863; Alcott recovered, but was never again really healthy

VI. Clara Barton

Born in MA in 1821
Worked as a copyist in the US Patent Office In 1861; may have been the first woman hired by the federal government
Began collecting and distributing supplies to wounded soldiers on her own initiative; most supplies were purchased with money she raised
Received permission to travel to battlefields in Virginia in 1862
After the war, led the Office of Missing Soldiers, directing the effort to identify unknown Union dead

VII. Northern black women during the Civil War

Focused on relief efforts directed toward escaped slaves
- “contraband”
Freedman’s Village in Arlington
- Ex-slaves who raised food for the Union Army
Harriet Jacobs
Sojourner Truth

VIII. Slave women’s experiences during the War

Severe material deprivation
Often targets of whites’ frustration/wrath
Suffered family disruptions
- Owners less likely to issue passes
- Relocation of “valuable” slaves to regions farther west (esp. Texas)
- Separated from husbands, other male relatives
  - Many forced to worked for the Confederate Army
  - But not as soldiers
  - Others were “volunteered” as laborers by theirs masters, while still others were impressed
    - As many as 50 to 60% of all black men were impressed at some point during the war
- Fleeing to Union lines (men to enlist in the Union Army)

IX. Meanings of freedom

Right to mobility
Freedom from physical abuses
- Including sexual abuse
Right to family integrity
- Right to legally marry
Right to pursue education
Right to self-expression
- Such as wearing the clothes one wanted
Right to the profits of one’s labor

X. Confederate women’s wartime experiences

Loss of family members
- Southerner men three times more likely to die in the war than Northern men
Up-close view of war
- Direct encounters with the enemy
Material deprivation
- South had depended on the North and Britain for manufactured goods
- Runaway inflation drove up food prices
  - Women appealed to Confederate officials as “soldiers’ wives,” crafting a new political identity for themselves
    - “A politics of subsistence” (historian S. McCurry)
      - When their demands were not met, some resorted to violence
        
        Numerous bread riots across the South, led by poor white women in 1863
        
        Well-organized, coordinated
        
        Largest in Richmond

XI. White women and plantation oversight

Confederate government initially tried to protect women from overseeing slave
- In 1861, Confederate Congress passed a law exempting one white man for each plantation with more than 20 slaves
  - Angered both non-slaveholders and small slave-holders
  - Legislation ultimately weakened
  - Confederate Congress more concerned with maintaining the loyalty of poor southern men than protecting elite women from assuming “unlady-like” duties
Elite women deeply resented finding themselves charged with slave management
- Many expressed more fear of their slaves than of the invading Union forces

XIII. Confederate Women and relief work

Confederate women were less active in wartime volunteerism than northern women
- Women remained more tightly bound to the household
- Predominantly rural character of South
- Highly patriarchal nature of Southern society
- No real separation between home and work
  - Thus, the idea of “home” as the basis of female moral authority had not taken root as firmly in the South
- No strong traditional of associational activity
  - Confederate women’s groups tended be less centralized, not as well organized
  - Very few elite women served as nurses or hospital matrons

XVI. At the war’s end

Northern women
- War work had been viewed within the framework of moral motherhood and true womanhood
- Remained unclear whether the war would lead to a new definition of female citizenship Freedmen and freedwomen
Freedwomen
- Unclear what type of labor system will emerge
- Unclear what type of rights and protections they will be granted
Confederate women – War reinforced a very conservative gender ideology
- Most white women hoped to salvage as much as possible of the old order