Image courtesy Library of Congress
Introduction to the Collection
Available scholarly resources provide insight into the lives of women during the American Civil War. While many women experienced the War at home as wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters, others volunteered to be soldiers and spies. Female abolitionists mobilized, and many African American women struggled against the dehumanizing bonds of slavery. Women in historic numbers worked in factories, coped with loss and deprivation, and entered wage-earning professions such as nursing.
This Web site presents an academic reference collection of print and electronic resources intended to offer both breadth and depth for scholars. Each member of our team created one of these four discrete subtopic collections, choosing ten resources from the larger universe of research materials available based on established reference evaluation criteria. Each of the collections is meant to provide a variety of formats and perspectives about the experiences of women during the Civil War.
Civil War Heroines
The sketches below offer a tangible introduction to Women in the Civil War by highlighting representative heroines for each topic addressed by this collection.
Image courtesy of Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University and retrieved from the ARTstor Digital Library
Abolition Heroine:
Lucretia Mott, 1793-1880
Lucretia Mott was born in New England, but spent most of her life in Philadelphia. She was a Quaker minister, an abolitionist, and a pioneer in the women's rights movement.
Mott supported William Garrison and those who advocated the immediate emancipation of slaves, then considered a radical position. When women were excluded from joining the American Anti-Slavery Society, formed by Garrison in 1833, Mott responded by helping to form the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. Although conservative Friends frequently condemned her and demanded that she be removed as a Quaker minister, she remained loyal to Garrison and continued to speak out for abolition. When the Fugitive Slave Law was passed in 1850, she and her husband took in slaves escaping via the Underground Railroad.
Crowds of angry men frequently threatened and harassed female abolitionists, and during Mott's career she faced several violent mobs. During the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women in 1838, an angry crowd surrounded Pennsylvania Hall where the women were meeting. When the mob threatened to burn the building, Mott kept the women calm and organized their safe retreat. After burning the hall the mob went in search of Mott’s home, but was diverted (Tolles, p. 594).
In 1840, Mott was traveling to a speaking engagement when an angry mob confronted her and a male companion, whom they tarred and feathered. When the men initially seized Mott’s companion, she asked them to take her instead. When told, “You are a woman and we have nothing to say to you,” she replied, “I ask no courtesy at your hands on account of my sex” (Cromwell, p. 42).
Joining Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1848, Mott helped launch the Women’s Rights Convention. Mott also helped write the “Declaration of Sentiments" (based on the Declaration of Independence), which called for the recognition of the political and religious rights of women. Once the Thirteenth Amendment was passed, many Garrisonians believed their work was done, but Mott continued to work for African American suffrage while also pressing for the voting rights of women.
. . . For more than 50 years she had dedicated herself to emancipation—the emancipation of the Negro from slavery, of American women from an inferior status, of the human mind from narrowness in religion . . .
Cromwell, O. (1958). Lucretia Mott. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Tolles, F. (1971). Mott, Lucretia. Notable American women: A biographical dictionary (Vol. 2, pp. 593-595). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Mott, Lucretia. (2009). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved April 18, 2009, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Image courtesy of The New Jersey Historical Society
Battlefront Heroine:
Cornelia Hancock, 1839-1926
A young Quaker schoolteacher, Cornelia Hancock answered the call for volunteer nurses to help with the flood of wounded after Gettysburg. Fiercely devoted to soldiers in her care, and skilled at cajoling civilians to donate much-needed supplies, Hancock marched across the battlefields of Virginia working in field hospitals and coming under fire numerous times. Well-educated and articulate, her regular correspondence about her experiences is at once keenly observant and passionate.
Historians believe her letters provide valuable insight into the aftermath of battle and a frontline nurse's attempt to cope with unspeakable suffering. After describing in detail how it took over 300 surgeons five days after Gettysburg to perform amputations, Cornelia wrote to her sister: "I feel assured I shall never feel horrified at anything that may happen to me hereafter." After the war she founded a school for freed slaves in South Carolina. She remained active in social work for the rest of her life, seeking housing solutions for the urban poor until her death in 1926.
. . . The idea of making a business of maiming men is not worthy of a civilization . . .
Hancock, C. (1998). Letters of a Civil War nurse: Cornelia Hancock, 1863-1865. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Image courtesy of Documenting the American South
Homefront Heroine:
Mary Boykin Chesnut, 1832-1886
Born Mary Boykin Miller, she married James Chesnut Jr. in 1840, and the girl who loved city living then spent much of the rest of her life in the country, mainly on plantations near Camden, South Carolina. She overcame the boredom of what she saw as provinciality by reading voraciously. On the eve of Columbia's fall to Sherman, Mary found room in her small allowance of baggage, not for much-needed food, but for the complete works of Shakespeare.
Mary Chesnut wrote what is possibly the most famous diary-style account of the Civil War. Her wit, insight, and keen observational skills provide a valuable view of the Confederate experience, and her diary is considered by many scholars to be the most important Confederate work. Mary Chesnut was outspoken and forthright. She was vocal in her objections to slavery, particularly the complex issue of the abuse of sexuality and power.
. . . Why was I born so frightfully ambitious . . .
Chesnut, M. B. M. (1981). Mary Chesnut's Civil War (C. V. Woodward, Ed.) New Haven: Yale University Press.
Image courtesy of Library of Congress
Slavery Heroines:
The Many "Unheard" Voices
African American women were rarely the subject of study for researchers gathering information pertaining to the Civil War. The role African American women played in the historiography of the Civil War are of immense importance. If these women were mentioned at all, they are nameless, faceless, and voiceless appendages, or a super woman like Harriet Tubman or Sojourner Truth.
The monographs in the Slavery portion of the collection provide a small portion of the thousands of narratives and testimonies concerning anti-bellum slave life; their personal reactions to bondage; and how their acts of resistance helped to bring about change for themselves and others.
. . . Admittedly, this document’s treatment of the women is celebratory. The first reason is that very little work, of a practical nature, has been done on African American women during the Civil War. Secondly, their endeavors deserve celebration and acknowledgement because they were performed in the interest of the larger African American community . . .
Forbes, Ella. (1998). African American Women during the Civil War. New York: Garland Publishing.