Part B:Summary of Evidence

1. Life before war
“Industrialization affected eastern and urban women first, eliminating some tasks but increasing responsibilities in other ways”(MRC 207). “An industrial development swept the nation…women became silkworm growers, glove makers, seamstresses, or shoe stitchers to obtain cash” (MRC 208). “The logic of their recruitment was that industrialists were organizing and mechanizing the kind of work that women had previously done at home” (MRC 208); “women were particularly vulnerable to exploitation and misery” (MRC 209). “In the absence of established markets and with the shortage of available labor, women of all classes had to work hard”(Tillson 213). “[Women] were poorly paid for long hours of labor, but sometimes…[they] provided the foundation for thriving family businesses” (MRC 208). “A ‘true woman’ was supposed to be pious, obedient, and submissive to their husband’s will and circumstances, devoting herself…[to] her family”(MRC 240). For years “women were denied participation in universal suffrage that national expansion had brought to white American men” and “[women’s] daily activities were thought to sanctify [their] existence as the symbolic center of family life”(MRC 239).
2. The effect of the war
In the “Civil War…men’s absence and its accompanying material, physical, and psychological strains challenged the will and even the sanity of women in both the North and the South”(Marten 17). Many women were “widowed early in the war”(Marten 17) and many “became [distraught] as a result of the proximity of the war”(Marten 18). They “clearly suffered, at least temporarily, from depression…[but still] managed to retain [their] sanity and keep [their] family well in the face of these problems [which] was indeed a major accomplishment”(Marten 24). “Most women managed to hold themselves and their households together despite the difficulties and hardships spawned by the war”( Marten 25). “During the war, women mobilized to do the work that had to be done and that no one else was doing.” (MRC 387). In the battlefields the “Civil War medical facilities were grossly inadequate” leading “women…[to organize] nursing services at hospitals in Washington, D.C, and near eastern battlefields” (Livermore 388). “Others [participated] in the Sanitary Commission’s massive organizational tasks- procuring food, bandages, clothing, and other necessities in every northern community and city...Southern women…[had] similar responsibilities” (MRC 387). Many enslaved women “accompanied [their] husband to battle, participating in the shooting (MRC 387). “The Civil War brought grief, destruction, and hard work to almost all white Southern women” (Cobb 392). Another of the women’s contribution was “making uniforms and gathering food provisions for the local cavalry company…[all of which] were exhilarating as well as exhausting” (Cobb 392). They all endangered their life every time they would leave the house to travel “dangerous, shell-pocked miles between [their] home and the front every day..dodging shells”(Marten 47) to feed the hungry solders. During those hard times, in order for them to survive they had to “spend much of their time in a cave hollowed out of a convenient hill…a six-feet-deep entrance…with a bedroom on one side and a dressing room on the other” (Marten 49)where they would maintain a “house underground”(Marten 49). “Still, most American women in the nineteenth century continued to do a prodigious amount of work for their expanding families and the expanding economy”(MRC 209)

Part A: Plan of Investigation

Women’s rights have always been an issue in America’s history. It has always been argued if women should have the same rights as men, or have the same treatment. Through prejudice and agony, women have tried to prove themselves to be as valuable as men. In the American Civil War, an important event in the history of the United States, women played a major role. During the American Civil War, women dedicated their time and effort to, not only take over the obligations at home, but also working as spies and even nurses.

Using Second to None: a Documentary History of American Women edited by Ruth Barnes Moynihan, Cynthia Russet, and Laurie Crumpacker, Civil War America: Voices from the Home Front by James Marten, and primary articles, this investigation will analyze how the women’s privileges changed Post-Civil War and whether they changed for their benefit or for their detriment.