The Civil War was not solely a “man’s war.” Indeed, women proved crucial to the economy and society on the home front of both sides as men left in large numbers to fight. A few historians have examined the roles of women at home, including Drew Gilpin Faust’s examination of white slaveholding women overseeing the last days of slavery in Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War (2004).
However, it is not just women’s home front roles that have received attention from scholars in recent years. In this discussion you will explore some of the roles women played in the war, including on the field of battle, and the efforts historians have undergone to discover this hidden history. First, make sure to read all three parts of DeAnne Blanton’s Women Soldiers of the Civil War (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. (1993) and the Smithsonian interview with Bonnie Tsui, The Women Who Fought in the Civil War (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.. Then, using the readings as evidence, consider the following in a post of at least 250 words:
How and why did women play an active role in the war as soldiers and in medical care and why has this history been ignored or trivialized by historians in the past?
How did these roles contrast with traditional expectations of femininity in the Victorian era?
Blanton argues that what is important is not their “individual exploits but the fact that they fought.” What do you think she means by this? Do you agree?
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