Originally aired on February 21, 1997 - In part 130 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson describes the contributions of women as factory workers, schoolmistresses and nurses, all occupations that were held by men prior to the war. He says that the equal rights movement began in earnest during the conflict.
#130 – Yes, We Can!
For American women, the equal right movement began in earnest with the Civil War. Women of that age were supposed to concern themselves with housekeeping and child-bearing. Any woman who did more – especially in public – was viewed with opinions ranging from distrust to disgust.
The Civil War changed all of that. That contest became a giant breakthrough for women in the highly structured societies of North as well as South. The demands of war, plus manpower shortages behind the lines, forced women – especially Southern women – to fill needs in three major occupations theretofore exclusively the domain of males.
First was the involvement of women as factory-workers and laborers. Once they crossed that traditional all-male barrier, they made their presence known in a positive manner. While not as muscular as males, women proved better at minutely detailed work such as engraving plates for currency or assembling small arms for the soldiers.
Many of their efforts bordered on the sacrificial. A Southern lady working at an arsenal could earn as much as $7 per day. Yet in the runaway inflation that marked the Southern Confederacy, such wages were a pittance. At a time when $7 daily was standard, a pound of butter cost $4, a dozen eggs were $20, and a bushel of corn (when one could be found) went for at least $50 – which was more than a week’s wages.
A second area of achievement for women was in education. Schoolmasters up until then had been charge of educating the young; but as the demand for men in the armies grew larger, the number of schoolmasters became smaller. A crisis would have developed had not women stepped forward as classroom volunteers. They soon added a new word to the American language: namely, “schoolmistress”. Women have demonstrated since that they can be excellent teachers.
The greatest contribution of all by women of the Civil War age was in the field of nursing. Before 1861, no respectable lady went to a hospital with all its suffering, bloodshed, infection, stench, and filth. Male nurses were a longtime custom – one that continued into the Civil War with such volunteers as Walt Whitman. Nevertheless, the insatiable appetites of war brought a critical need for more nurses in the military hospitals.
Women freely and sometimes painfully began answering the call. They assisted the surgeons on daily rounds, wrote letters for illiterates, prepared special dishes when possible, comforted the homesick, bathed the brows of the feverish, and offered spiritual comfort to the dying. In short, they were a friend when a friend was badly needed.
Some women endured the nightmare of attending to wounded men at advanced first-air stations. Alabama’s Kate Cumming observed of her first service at such a place: “Nothing that I had ever heard or read had given me the faintest idea of the horrors (I have) witnessed. I sat up all night, bathing the men’s wounds, and giving them water. The men are lying all over the house…just as they were brought from the battlefield. We have to walk, and when we give the men anything, (have to) kneel in blood and water.”
Southern women of the antebellum period were never the male-dominated, helpless creatures portrayed in later romantic novels. Many of them were well-educated, vivacious, articulate, and talented. If any Scarlet O’Haras actually existed in the Confederacy, they were few in number and insignificant in the bigger picture. The overwhelming majority of Southern women belonged to the middle or lower economic classes. During the war, they struggled as best they could to keep alive, maintain the family circle, and sustain hope. In quiet and unobtrusive ways, they did what needed to be done.
But then, women have always been that way.