civil war essay from B.D.M.M

Women are the back the bone of the world and they were the biggest reason why the civil war lasted as long as it did. The women acted as nurses to take care of the wounded soldiers and try to treat them so they can return to war to fight for the their sides. They also worked to make uniforms. With out all the uniforms that these women made the soldiers wouldn’t be able carry their guns, knifes, and any other things that they needed for battle. Working in factories is what they also did to take care of their families while their husband went off to war to fight for either the north or the south. Women during the civil war showed perseverance to say strong for their sides and families. Without the women neither side would have been able to last as long as they did.

The women lost fathers, husbands, and sons. They still stayed strong to support their families. Many women received letters from soldiers which are either writing about the war or how the miss their family, they sometimes even wrote the letters first.
I received your letter yesterday, and now proceed to answer it, as I have a little time on my hands this evening, and I do not know that I can spend it in a more profitable way. Certainly I can not spend it in a more agreeable way than in writing to one in whom my fondest hopes of happiness are centered it is just a year ago today Mary that I became a servant of Uncle Sam, I hardly thought then that I should have to be a Soldier So long as a year, but now, I don’t know, but my chance is good for a year or two more (James G. Barker & Justine Ahlstrom. Page 23).


This passage is important because it shows soldiers on their free time writing letters to their families. In this letter a soldier writing his wife and how he has been away for over a year. The war was into a year and it still was maybe another year or two. While the soldiers wife stays strong while her husband is over at war. She also toke the new role as the father figure by working to make sure her family was feed and clothed.

I sit down to write you a few lines as I have he chance of sending it by hand there was not much news of consequence in my trip through Kentucky the only that happened to me was that my shoes gave out and I had to travel about five hundred miles bare foot my feet were so sore that I could hardly walk one of them had thirteen blisters under the bottom it was a trying time with all the men we marched over twelve hundred miles you can hardly think how the poor men looked marching twenty five miles a day barefoot and hardly clothed enough to cover their nakedness I am not very good health I have had the diarrhea for more then two months and have yet the very worst kind I would like very much to go home to see you but the General will not allow me ((James G. Barker & Justine Ahlstrom. Page 27).

This shows how the soldiers had to walk without shoes, clothes, and how they miss their families. Soldiers had to walk twenty-five miles a day and over five hundred miles through Kentucky. With the entire walk that they did their shoes gave in to the point where they had to walk barefoot which lead to blisters. Some even didn’t have clothing so they became sick which lead to them not being able to fight or either death. The man that wrote this letter seems like he was a soldiers of the south because they didn’t have good clothing that lead to people becoming sick that made them not want to join the army. (Antietam D.V.D) The letters seem to be the same beside a few differences. They are the same because of the way they talk about the war, how they miss their loved ones, how long they have been gone and how they want to come home. The differences are little. The only difference in the letters is that in one letter one man write homes to his mother and the other one writes to his wife. The biggest difference is the man that writes to his mother talks about how they walk so much and their shoes give in and his health.
Wounded or sick soldiers were taking care of many women but mainly Clara Barton and her team. “Clara Barton's civil war work began in April 1861. After the Battle of Bull Run, she established an agency to obtain and distribute supplies. Clara Barton Founder of the American Red Cross to wounded soldiers. In July 1862, she obtained permission to travel behind the lines, eventually reaching some of the grimmest battlefields of the war and serving during the sieges of Petersburg and Richmond. Barton delivered aid to soldiers of both the North and South. (http://americancivilwar.com/women/cb.html)

The women did just hear about how bad the war was going they witnessed the fighting and killing. Other women acted as spies and nurses at the same time like Harriet Tubman. Tubman was a runway slave who help other slaves escape to the north using the Underground Railroad, a secret passage of safe house’s leading to the north. “Civil War she was a spy with for the federal forces in South Carolina as well as a nurse.” (http://americancivilwar.com/women/harriet_tubman.html). Soldiers lived in germ-ridden camps, engaged in heinous battle, languished in appalling prison camps, and died horribly, yet heroically. When you here of this you would think that only men would have endured this, but there was women soldiers that did the same. Both the Union and the confederate armies forbade the enrolment of women. So to get around this they disguised themselves as man and used men names. Mary Livermore was one of those brave women to do this with many others. Women soldiers were sometimes revealed that they weren’t women by accident or casualty. Mary Owens discovered to be a woman after she was wounded in battle. She was sent back to her home in Pennsylvania where she was welcomed by many people and the press.

Some women was not discovered to be women like Sarah Emma Edmonds Seelye and fought in the war for many years. These two women fought the whole Civil War. Sarah Edmonds a Canadian by birth, hided her identity as Franklin Thompson and enlisted as a private in the second Michigan Infantry in Detroit on May 25, 1861. While she was in the war she in the Union army and her duties was to be a regimental nurse and mail and dispatch carrier. In April 19,1863 she vanished because she caught malaria, and she thought that if she was hospitalization would reveal to the doctor and the army that she is indeed a women. The army’s didn’t want women in the army because they wouldn’t fit the traditional image of females. Females were supposed to stay home, clean the house, and raise the children. They were expected to do this while the man worked and if needed to go off to war and fight for their country. When the rumor of women wanting to fight in the war man was shocked about this. Women wanted show the men and the world that women are just as useful as everybody else.

These women did something so brave that some man did not even want to do; they were willing to give their life to their respected sides either the North or South. These brave women soldiers of the Civil War engaged in combat, were wounded and taken prisoner, and were killed in action. They went to war strictly by choice, knowing the risks involved. Their reason for doing so is unknown. (http://americancivilwar.com/women/) The only thing we know is these women are the bravest of their time and was before their time. Sarah Edmonds wrote in 1865 "I could only thank God that I was free and could go forward and work, and I was not obliged to stay at home and weep." Sarah Edmonds was proud of what she did and when the war was over she was able to go on and live her life happy. “The women soldiers of the Civil War were capable fighters. From a historical viewpoint, the women combatants of 1861 to 1865 were not just ahead of their time; they were ahead of our time.” This is from a historian on the Civil war. These women paid the women for women that want to be in the army. Women are still being stopped from going in direct combat, but they are able to enter the army.

These women that was from the Civil War era are the bravest women ever to go through what they went through for four years is amazing. Nether army would have been able to last as long as they did in the war with out the women behind their sides. The women were the backbone of that era. It’s hard to find women like the ones in the Civil War time period. They stayed strong the whole war and never turned their back on their respected sides which was either the North or the south.