American Women In The Civil War Essay

The Civil War affected the lives of many American women. Many women would disguise themselves as men so that they could go and join the fight. Other women would serve as spies and nureses, and many more would take new roles at home when theier husbands, brothers, and fathers would go to war. Thousands of women who were enslaved began to transition into freedom to begin their new lives with the horrors of the war.

American women as a whole improved their education standing, secured additional legal rightsm and aquired greater access to manufactured goods. Some women like many men would leap at the oppurtunity for adventures by fighting in the civil war. About 250 female Civil War soldiers have been documented by historians, but there were a lot more. Women would take part in every major battle the would include the battle of Shiloh which at least six women fought. The women were motivated by their thirst for adventure and also the desire to accompany their loved ones. Most of the female soldiers remained undetected as women unless they were hurt or killed.

Not every women who went to battle disguised themselves as men, “Daughters of the regiment” engaged in quasi-military work, usually for regiments in which one of their male relatives were serving. These women would do everything from cooking meals to helping out on hospital ships. Some women
North and South military administrators and surgeons initially discouraged women from serving the wounded and ill in any official capacity. Nursing was very difficult and often fross, women had to demonstrate that they could do the job, and provse that they could funtion in any chaotic enviroment full of male strangers. Civil War nurses did much more than just change peoples bandages, or tend to peoples wounds they also would pass out supplies, write letters for soldiers and read to them, cooked and served meals and do the