Patriotic Toil: Northern Women and the American Civil War

"˜So Pleasant to be a School Maam': The Civil War as an Educational Force for Women

“…Domestic, community, and patriotic leadership on the home front during war sometimes claimed women's attention at the expense of their formal education. Civil War scholars have detailed the extensive labor Northern and Southern women performed to support the war effort (Attie, 1998;Clinton & Silber, 1992;Faust, 1996;Richard, 2003;Silber, 2005). Women procured goods for soldiers, raised money, participated in local civic events, wrote letters, provided essential "kinship work" (Di Leonardo, 1987) to sustain families, farms and businesses, and performed duties that disrupted traditional gender roles and, significantly, led to leadership opportunities after the war.…”

“…This paper draws from a collection of over 150 letters Northern women wrote during the American Civil War (1861War ( -1865 to consider aspects of women's educational experiences during this devastating national conflict that spanned four bloody years and involved millions of Americans, which I have discussed at length elsewhere (Bailey, 2008;Rhoades & Bailey, 2009). i Women's historians (Attie, 1998;Clinton & Silber, 1992;Faust, 1996;Richard, 2003;Silber, 2005) have detailed varied ways the Civil War shaped women's social roles, gendered consciousness, and political organizing, yet its educational implications for women's lives and leadership remain an under-theorized aspect of the war's complicated legacy. Given the significant role education has played in advancing women's status historically, and women's activism throughout the 19th century to increase educational access, these aspects of women's experience merit further consideration.…”

“…As historians have detailed, the Civil War was a profoundly gendered phenomenon. Gendered beliefs saturated cultural discourse about patriotism and war, gendered prescriptions shaped men and women's war experiences and roles, and sex/gender status influenced who lived and died: over 620,000 men lost their lives in the war's hospitals, camps, and battlefields (Attie, 1998;Clinton & Silber, 1992;Faust, 1996;Richard, 2003;Silber, 2005). Gender also shaped patterns of documentation during the war and scholarship produced in its aftermath (Faust, 1996;Nelson, 1997).…”