Woman in the world

                                                        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.