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Were American Women Ultimately gainers or loser in Conflict
Were American Women ultimately gainers or losers in the conflict?
American society during the nineteenth century was extremely patriarchal, in particular throughout the Old South. The hierarchies of race, class and most importantly gender were readily apparent. They not only helped shape the identities of the public but also dictated the life choices and aspirations of many. However, with the arrival of the civil war, many of these hierarchies were threatened. Before the war, especially in the South, the role of women was quite clear. They were destined for motherhood. Their world centred around their families. They looked after their children and managed the household. They were often expected to bear children for as long as they were able, making it very hard for them to have any kind of career or social life outside of the home. Domestic life was the expectation. Once the war began, it questioned many Southerners most fundamental assumptions about their identities and their place in the world. They found that for many women, the war in a sense opened up new opportunities. When many of the men went off to fight, women had the responsibility of looking after the family and even taking on jobs which the men left behind. They were, as one Texan woman said, “trying to do a man’s business”. However, with the end of the civil war did women find that they had gained anything from the experience or with the return of their men from war was there also a return to the domestic lifestyle they wanted to leave behind?
The high level of mobilisation of men and resources and the importance of the Southern home front made the civil war experience much more direct and significant for the confederate women. When many of the men were conscripted into the army, the women were left to take over many of their jobs. The amount of men actually left behind was as less as 5% of the population of some towns, such as New Bern, North Carolina, where only 20 of the 250 white people remaining in the town were men. Up in the North, as men were leaving to fight, there was a steady influx of immigrants arriving in the hope of finding work. They were able to take over the jobs in factories and fields left by the men joining the army. Men in the South however, were not replaced so the women had to take on a lot more responsibility. Women would take on work in factories as well as the added responsibility of taking care of the household and supervising their slaves. Sometimes their work included tedious and dangerous jobs in weapon factories, but they also took jobs such as shop assistants, office clerks and teachers, all of which had previously been dominated by men.
Women also supported the war in others ways. They formed [next page]