Compromises of Those Left Behind During the Trials of the Civil War: A Portrait of Southern Women
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Aftermath

"Now we have only burned towns, and sacked villages. Yes, poverty, with no future and no hope. We are exiles in our own land"
                              --Mary Chesnut
                      

Immediate:

  • There were shortages, hunger, homelessness, disease, grief, loneliness, despair, all shared misery
  • Wives grieved their dead husbands, mothers grieved their dead sons, or wailed for the legless or armless  sons
  • With 600,000 people dead, women have no income, seeked pension from government for dead husbands, expected to leave war jobs, go back to households

At end of war:

  •  Women realized they could make their own lives, and work together  to accomplish a goal.            
  • Some women began running businesses, doing jobs formerly done by men.
  • Took control of own money
  • Women began to view themselves in a new light, that they are not the "weaker sex

"Sisters and fathers, brothers and grandparents all feared the dark brooding silences into which their battle veterans so often lapsed while women gasped awake in bed when their men screamed out from sweaty nightmares"

                                   --James P. Reger, author of Life in the South During the Civil War

Women working
1858petermarchfarm.jpg
http://www.oneonta.edu/library/dailylife/business/1858petermarchfarm.jpg

Women in Future Years:

  • World War 1: US government allowed 30,000 women to play a role
  • 13,000 women enlisted in the Navy and the Marine Corps on the same status as men and wore a uniform blouse with same insignia.

                      This is because of the massive effort shown by women during the Civil War, as nurses, and spies: their dedication shown by nursing men from all sides of the war gave way to the government seeing women as people instead of inferior as they once had.

"...Are we alone to ask and take the utmost that our women can give, service and sacrifice of every kind, and still say we do not see what title that gives them to stand by our sides in the guidance of the affairs of their nations and ours? We have made partners of the women in this war"

                              -President Woodrow Wilson on sufferage and women's rights

Female US trooper
mf_female_trooper_01.jpg
http://www.firstworldwar.com/features/graphics/mf_female_trooper_01.jpg

National History Fair 2007.
Vicky Steeves, Ben Hopkins