Women In The War Kayla Kilby
Women in the war were very important. Most house wives and women stayed at home with the kids. They were there to cook, clean and maid the kids. When war began women were subject to it and was not involved. Later down the road they came to realize that they needed women in the war and by doing so it helped bring war a little further. Thousands of women in the North and South joined volunteer brigades and
signed up to work as nurses. It was the first time in American history
that women played a significant role in a war effort. By the end of the
war, these experiences had expanded many Americans’ definitions of “true
womanhood.”
Women in the war mostly helped as nurses but they tried to find a way to work on the front lines, caring for sick and
injured soldiers and keeping the rest of the Union troops healthy and
safe. Nearly 20,000 women worked more directly for the Union war effort.
Working-class white women and free and enslaved African-American women
worked as laundresses, cooks and “matrons,” and some 3,000 middle-class
white women worked as nurses. During the Civil War, women especially faced a host of new duties and
responsibilities. For the most part, these new roles applied the ideals
of Victorian domesticity to “useful and patriotic ends.” However, these
wartime contributions did help expand many women’s ideas about what
their “proper place” should be.
