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A Changing Force - The American Civil War Women and Victorian Cu
A Changing Force - The American Civil War Women and Victorian Cu
Spring 2014
McNish, Megan E., "A Changing Force: The American Civil War, Women, and Victorian Culture" (2014). Student Publications. 257.
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A Changing Force: The American Civil War, Women, and Victorian
Culture
Abstract
The American Civil War thrust Victorian society into a maelstrom. The war disrupted a culture that was based
on polite behavior and repression of desires. The emphasis on fulfilling duties sent hundreds of thousands of
men into the ranks of Union and Confederate armies. Without the patriarchs of their families, women took up
previously unexplored roles for the majority of their sex. In both the North and the South, females were
compelled to do physical labor in the fields, runs shops, and manage slaves, all jobs which previously would
have been occupied almost exclusively by men. These shifts in society, though not experienced by all families,
shook the very foundation of Victorian culture. In this sense, as men left to preserve their lifestyles, women
were forced to move outside of their typical socially normative roles, which exposed their society to alteration
during the war. [excerpt]
Keywords
Civil War, Women, Gender, Slaves, Victorian
Disciplines
Cultural History | History | History of Gender | Social History | United States History | Women's History |
Women's Studies
Comments
This paper was written for Prof. Magdalena Sanchez's Hist 300: Historical Method course, Spring 2014.
This student research paper is available at The Cupola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/
student_scholarship/257
A Changing Force: The American Civil
War, Women, & Victorian Culture
Megan McNish
Historical Methods
April 28, 2014
I affirm that I have upheld the highest principles of honesty and integrity in my academic
work and have not witnessed a violation of the Honor Code.
___________________________
Megan McNish
McNish 2
The American Civil War thrust Victorian society into a maelstrom. The war disrupted a
culture that was based on polite behavior and repression of desires. The emphasis on fulfilling
duties sent hundreds of thousands of men into the ranks of Union and Confederate armies.
Without the patriarchs of their families, women took up previously unexplored roles for the
majority of their sex. In both the North and the South, females were compelled to do physical
labor in the fields, runs shops, and manage slaves, all jobs which previously would have been
occupied almost exclusively by men. These shifts in society, though not experienced by all
families, shook the very foundation of Victorian culture. In this sense, as men left to preserve
their lifestyles, women were forced to move outside of their typical socially normative roles,
Antebellum Society
It is not hard to imagine women moving into roles vacated by men as a result of war. This
is something women have done since men began leaving their homes to fight in wars. It maybe
difficult, however, for modern society to conceptualize how very different life was in Victorian
America. Antebellum society in which the Civil War developed was one marked by the virtue of
suffering. 1 Men and women alike were expected to repress longings and internalize stronger
emotions. This concept also extended to physical suffering. At the dawn of the Civil War,
modern medicine was in its infancy and germ theory had not yet taken hold. As a result,
mortality rates were very high and medical care was often more guesswork than diagnosis. 2 In
this time period, childbirth was particularly dangerous and the death of young children was quite
1
Frances M. Clarke, War Stories: Suffering and Sacrifice in the Civil War North (Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, 2011), 8.
2
Clarke, War Stories, 10-11.
McNish 3
common. 3
Despite the suffering they endured, privileged women were raised to be genteel ladies
and to lead lives of quiet leisure. More specifically, due to the cult of domesticity that had
developed in the antebellum period, women were expected to be tender, passive, innocent,
vulnerable, nervous, and delicate. These expectations meant that women were almost entirely
dependent on the men in their lives. 4 As a result of this dependence and societal expectations,
women did not work in fields, thereby making them economically insignificant to the
household. 5 Victorians were taught that a woman’s place was in the home, doing housework and
raising children. 6
As “guardians of the family,” 7 women often attempted to keep the realities of politics
from their children. 8 As they grew older, however, women of the upper and middle classes were
expected to become more politically astute, particularly in the South. 9 Though they were to be
silent observers, women needed to have, at the very least, a nominal understanding of the
political atmosphere in which they lived, as they were expected to be participants in private
dealings. 10 Though they played a small role, women’s interactions in the private sphere of
3
Clarke, War Stories, 8.
4
Catherine Clinton, The Other Civil War: American Women in the Nineteenth Century, rev. ed.
(New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1984), 147.
5
Mary Collins, “Mollie: A Romping Child,” in The Essential Daughter: Changing Expectations
for Girls at Home, 1797 to Present (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), 57; Judith Geisberg, “From
Harvest to Battlefield: Rural Women and the War,” in Army at Home: Women and the Civil War
on the Northern Homefront (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 22.
6
Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South (New York,
NY: Oxford University Press, 1982), 50-51.
7
Clinton, The Other Civil War 148.
8
Collins, “Mollie,” in The Essential Daughter, 58.
9
Drew Gilpin, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil
War (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 10, EBSCO ebook.
10
Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor, 50. Faust, Mothers of Invention, 12.
McNish 4
politics was an important part of Victorian life. 11 Female influence in the political sphere did not
extend to the legal sphere, as they had very little power in that area. Men retained power in this
facet of life; only men served as jurors, judges, and lawyers and were less likely to break the
confines of what society considered normal in formal settings. 12 In addition, when women
married they, for the most part, disappeared legally which meant they could not own property
Slaves posed a particularly difficult problem for white women in the South. Some women
in the South went so far as to view slaves as their enemy. 14 Their reasoning was that, although
the control and management of slaves in the antebellum South was left to men, the institution
undermined the role of women in the Southern household in the sense that female slaves, who
performed tasks similar to the white women they served, diluted the importance of the Southern
mother. 15 If slaves could perform the same duties as white women, then, Southern women felt,
they were less essential in the household. In some instances, women were left to manage their
husbands’ estates when they were away for short periods of time, but these intermittent
experiences in roles of power were neither agreeable to women, nor did they further their role in
society. 16 Another complaint women had against slavery was that they, along with children and
slaves, were expected to submit, without question, to the authority of their husbands and
fathers. 17 This relegated them, in some ways, to a status similar to the slaves their families
owned, even though family members did not experience the degree of suffering of slaves. In
11
Faust, Mothers of Invention, 12.
12
Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor, 246, 254.
13
Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor, 246.
14
Clinton, The Other Civil War, 38.
15
Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor, 69; Clinton, The Other Civil War, 39.
16
Clinton, The Other Civil War, 38-39.
17
Clinton, The Other Civil War, 38-39.
McNish 5
many senses women and children were also prisoners, as, particularly in the Old South, the man
was quite literally the master of the house. 18 The over arching control that men retained over
women left many females, in both the North and the South, without significant power other than
When war broke out in 1861, the society that men left behind and went off to war to
protect was male dominated. In the South, the war took a particularly large portion of the male
population from their homes and, before the war was over, three of every four white men in the
South would serve in a Confederate army. 19 Though the loss was not as pronounced in the North
in proportion to the overall population, women still felt the loss of the men that provided for
them. Females were forced into roles they previously had never, or had rarely ever, inhabited. In
this sense, men were exposing the society which they had gone to war to preserve to fundamental
alteration.
One of the many ways women were forced out of their traditional roles in society was
through work on farms. For middle class families, more often than not, husbands and sons were
the ones that worked in the fields to plant and harvest the crops. When they went off to war,
women were forced to fill their roles or starve. 20 Mary Livermore, a Sanitary Commission of
Chicago worker, related her experiences as she traveled through Wisconsin and Iowa. In these
states, Livermore saw that “women were in the field everywhere…until then an unusual sight.” 21
18
Faust, Mothers of Invention, 32.
19
Faust, Mothers of Invention, 30-31.
20
Geiseberg, Army at Home, 17-18.
21
Mary A. Livermore, “Northern Women on Farms,” in Early American Women: A
Documentary History, ed. Nancy Woloch (New York, NY: McGraw Hill, 2002), 262. This
particular sources is a small excerpt from Mary Livermore’s longer memoir, My Story of the
War: A Woman’s Narrative of Four Years Personal Experience.
McNish 6
Livermore spent a period of time speaking with the women she observed in the fields and was
quickly exposed to one particular family’s condition. “‘The men have all gone to the war, so that
my man can’t hire help at any price, and I told my girls we must turn to and give him a lift with
the harvestin’.’” 22 In this woman’s case, her husband was still at home. However, because of the
labor shortage created by both her sons and other men in the area leaving for war, she and her
daughters were compelled to lend assistance in the fields. 23 Instances like this one were not
isolated. These scenes were “multiplied thousands of times” to maintain production of materials
in the North. 24
A woman working in the fields was not something exclusive to Northern agriculture
during the Civil War. Southern women from families of many classes were forced into similar
predicaments. Ann Smith Mew, a South Carolina widow, and her family were obligated to
cultivate their own fields after their slaves ran away. Mew was too old to aid in the cultivation of
the fields herself, so her married daughters completed the project so that the family could
continue to survive. 25 This meant that her daughters were likely doing work Mew’s sons and
slaves had done before the war. In addition to performing physical labor to which they were
formerly unaccustomed, the Mew women were working in the fields alongside Hannah, the
single slave who had not run away from the plantation. 26 Women of the upper and middle classes
working alongside slaves was unthinkable before the war, but was necessary in order for families
like the Mews to survive. In Southern homes that did not own slaves, women were forced into
22
Livermore, “Northern Women on Farms,” in Early American Women, 262.
23
Livermore, “Northern Women on Farms,” in Early American Women, 262-263.
24
Livermore, “Northern Women on Farms,” in Early American Women, 263.
25
Joan E. Cashin, “Widow in a Swamp: Gender, Unionism, and Literacy in the Occupied South
During the Civil War,” in Occupied Women: Gender, Military Occupation, and the American
Civil War, ed. LeeAnn Whites and Alicia P. Long (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University
Press, 2009), 171,179.
26
Cashin, “Widow in a Swamp,” in Occupied Women, 182.
McNish 7
the fields much sooner than Mrs. Mew’s family. These women were often compensating for the
Both Southern and Northern women were bound to work in fields performing manual and
physical labor so their families could subsist on their farms and plantations. In the antebellum
period, it was only women of lower classes that were forced to work in the fields, rather than
women of privilege. 28 However, with men gone off to war, incentives for women of higher
classes to perform field labor were greatly increased. In many cases, in order to put food on the
table, these women had to plant and harvest the fields themselves.
Though relationships with slaves only existed for some women in the South, the
interactions between slaves and their mistresses are critical to understand just how much
Victorian society changed when men went off to war. As Catherine Clinton mentions in The
Other Civil War, women were sometimes left in charge of their husbands’ plantations while they
were away, but being compelled to manage the plantation for four years was an entirely different
proposition. However, it was not only slave interactions in the fields and discipline that caused
Southern women discomfort. Women experienced new types of interactions with slaves that they
Disciplining slaves was a particularly difficult prospect for women whose male head of
house was no longer in residence. Louticia Jackson, a Southern plantation mistress, expressed the
difficulty she had in controlling a particular slave, Willes, in a letter to her eldest son, Ashbury,
27
Faust, Mothers of Invention, 32.
28
Clinton, The Other Civil War, 22.
McNish 8
who had joined the Confederate army. 29 Willes took advantage of Mrs. Jackson on many
occasions, but in one particular instance, he distressed her so greatly she “went in the room, and
lay down with the back ache.” 30 Mrs. Jackson was not the only woman to experience problems
with slaves. Drew Faust recounts the experiences of Ada Bacot, another Southern woman who
lived and grew up on a plantation, who complained that on her family’s plantation her “orders
were disregarded more and more every day.” 31 Joe Mobley described a similar moment recorded
by Mary Boykin Chestnut, one of the most famous Civil War diarists. “Dick, the butler…looks
over my head –he scents freedom in the air.” 32 As Northern troops drew closer, slaves became
more conscious of the opportunity they had for freedom. Despite the challenges, it was essential
that women retain control over slavery on the homefront, as it was a crucial aspect of the
Southern lifestyle. 33
female questioned, “do you think that this woman’s hand can keep [the slaves] in check?” 34 As
29
Nancy Woloch, Early American Women: A Documentary History, 1600-1900 (New York, NY:
McGraw Hill, 2002), 264. Louticia Jackson, “A Wartime Mistress,” in Early American Women:
A Documentary History, 1600-1900, ed. Nancy Woloch (New York, NY: McGraw Hill, 2002),
264. “A Wartime Mistress” is an excerpt from Mrs. Jackson’s August 23, 1863 letter to her son
Ashbury Jackson who was away from home serving in the Confederate army.
30
Jackson, “A Wartime Mistress,” in Early American Women, 265.
31
Ada Bacot, Ada Bacot Diary, May 3, December 25, 1861, March 17, September 8, 1862,
South Carolinian Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC quoted in Drew Gilpin
Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War
(Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 62, EBSCO ebook. It is not
clear which date Faust is quoting from in this instance. See Faust, Mothers of Invention, 272.
32
Mary Chestnut, Mary Chestnut’s Civil War, ed. C. Van Woodward (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1981) quoted in Joe A. Mobley, Weary of War: Life on the Confederate Home
Front (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006), 66, EBSCO ebook.
33
Kimberly Harrison, The Rhetoric of Revel Women: Civil War Diaries and Confederate
Persuasion (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2013), 104.
34
A Planter’s Wife to Governor John J. Pettus, May 1, 1862, John J. Pettus Papers, Mississippi
Department of Archives and History, Jackson, MS, quoted in Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of
Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War (Chapel Hill, NC: THe
McNish 9
the additional stresses to the slave/mistress relationship multiplied, this concern became more
pronounced and it became increasingly difficult for Southern women to retain control over the
already strained relationship they had with their slaves. 35 What Southern women lacked was the
fear and respect of their family slaves, which was extremely difficult for them to gain. “I am so
sick of trying to do a man’s business,” 36 wrote one Confederate woman. Yet, these were roles
that women had to undertake or watch the lives they knew literally walk away from them.
Men on the front lines understood the predicament their wives and mothers faced. In a
letter to his wife Maggie, Charles Roberts, a Confederate soldier, expressed regret that he was
not at home to take care of the family’s slaves. “[The slaves] certainly want someone to look
after them.” 37 This suggests that Roberts fully comprehended his wife’s quandary. Though the
letters Maggie, Charles’ wife, do not survive, if the troubles she had with the Roberts’ family
slaves were anything like that experienced by Mrs. Jackson, Ada Bacot, or Mary Chestnut, it is
not difficult to see why Roberts wished he could be home to help his wife. Southern women
struggled to control the slaves on their families’ plantations and no matter how their husbands
and sons wished they could help, the war had taken them far away. This made them almost
Though discipline became more and more difficult as the war progressed, it was not the
only problem that Southern women faced with the slaves they encountered. Sarah Morgan, a
young woman of some privileged from a slaveholding family and one of the Civil War’s more
University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 56, EBSCO ebook. Quoting a Mississippi planters’
wife.
35
Harrison, The Rhetoric of Rebel Women, 105.
36
Lizzie Neblett to Will Neblett, August 28, 1863, letter, quoted in Kimberly Harrison, The
Rhetoric of Rebel Women: Civil War Diaries and Confederate Persuasion (Carbondale, IL:
Southern Illinois University Press, 2013), 13.
37
Roberts, Charles to Maggie Roberts, letter, June 23, 1864, Civil War Archive, University of
Mississippi Libraries and Digital Collections, University, MS, 4.
McNish 10
famous diarist, upon her arrival in Baton Rouge, had not eaten for hours and had no inkling of
where she could obtain food. The “fact that the old negro was giving me part of her supper made
me rather sparing,” 38 Morgan admitted. This sort of interaction with a slave would have been
unthinkable before the war, especially for someone of upper middle class privilege like Sarah
Morgan. In April of 1863, Morgan was forced to breech society even further. Out of necessity,
Morgan slept “under the same bedclothes with our black, shiny negro nurse!” 39 What is even
more surprising was her reaction to the situation. Rather than feeling shock and utter disgust, as
would have been expressed by many Southern women of the period, the only thing Sarah
expressed was gratefulness that she had a place to sleep. 40 Sarah Morgan Dawson’s interactions
are peculiar in light of the fact that she was an ardent supporter of slavery. In 1873, almost ten
years after the war ended, she published editorial pieces in the Charleston New and Courier
outlining just how much she still believed in slavery. 41 Despite Sarah’s ardent belief in the slave
system both during and after the war, she was more concerned with having a place to sleep,
rather than who was her bedmate. This is what the war had brought to Southern women, a need
Despite everyday interactions with slaves before the war, Southern women were not slave
masters, nor were they prepared for these duties. In addition, slaves lacked respect for the
38
Sarah Morgan Dawson, A Confederate Girl’s Diary (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers
Inc., 2014), 49, Nook.
39
Dawson, A Confederate Girl’s Diary, 242.
40
Dawson, A Confederate Girl’s Diary, 242.
41
Sarah Morgan Dawson, “Paradox,” Charleston News and Courier, April 25, 1873 in The
Correspondence of Sarah Morgan and Francis Warrington Dawson: with Selected Editorials by
Sarah Morgan for the Charleston News and Courier, ed. Giselle Roberts (Athens, GA: The
University of Georgia Press, 2004), 200. Sarah Morgan Dawson, “Whites and Blacks,”
Charleston News and Courier, May 12, 1873 in The Correspondence of Sarah Morgan and
Francis Warrington Dawson: with Selected Editorials by Sarah Morgan for the Charleston News
and Courier, ed. Giselle Roberts (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 2004), 200-201.
McNish 11
authority of Confederate women. Despite the difficulties they faced managing slaves, their
frustrations with the work did not signify that they were any less patriotic to the cause for which
their men had gone off to fight. 42 Rather, women remained ardently supportive of the
Confederate agenda, even after the war. 43 Their complaints signified, however, that society had
been altered since their husbands and sons left for war.
Women on the homefront were particularly vulnerable without the presence of their
family patriarchs, to the wills of invading armies. Though more prevalent in the South because of
the war’s theaters of operation, women in the North, primarily in the Southern Pennsylvania
town of Gettysburg, also were exposed to potential treachery of both armies. Women were
sometimes forced to let material possessions slip through their fingers in exchange for the safety
of their families. 44 These material possessions ranged from family heirlooms to clothing and
essential foodstuffs. No matter what was taken from them, these experiences highlighted just
how vulnerable women on the homefront were to the continuously moving armies.
Charles Roberts wrote to his wife Maggie, “I am sorry the Yankees took off our cow and
calf, not so much for her value in money, as the inconvenience to you in housekeeping.” 45 As
members of various armies made off with possessions of civilians, they invariably made life
more difficult for those families. Though the loss of the cow did not significantly deplete the
family’s food stock, the Roberts’ loss made their everyday occurrence of getting milk that much
more difficult for the family. While perhaps not an essential part of the Victorian diet, milk was
42
Harrison, The Rhetoric of Rebel Women, 13.
43
Harrison, The Rhetoric of Rebel Women, 13.
44
It was though that permitting possessions to be taken from their homes would keep the family
safe from harm by the invading soldiers.
45
Charles Roberts to Maggie Roberts, letter, January 30, 1863, Civil War Archive, University of
Mississippi Libraries and Digital Collections, University, MS, 1.
McNish 12
important for the Roberts family and, after the cow was taken, became something that would
have to be sought elsewhere. Charles Roberts mentioned another women in the community, Mrs.
Lees, as a source from whom his wife could obtain milk. However, this was an extra, previously
unnecessary step that would have to be taken in order to secure a staple in the family diet. It is
unclear whether Mrs. Roberts obtained milk from Mrs. Lees, as her letters do not survive. This
instance makes it easy to see how the taking of the family’s cow by the Union soldiers affected
As much as historians may wish it were so, the example of the Roberts family is not
isolated. The Mew family also experienced loss due to the Union army. In their case, the Union
soldiers took several of the Mew’s livestock, and also entered the Mew house and took food. 47
The soldiers proceeded to take bedding and clothes from the bedrooms. At one point, Mrs. Mew,
despite being sick in bed, protested to the commanding officer, who seemed to have little control
over his men. 48 Though he prevented the soldiers from taking clothing and bedding from Mrs.
Mew’s room, he could not prevent the loss of these items from other rooms in the house. 49 Not
only could these encounters severely damage a family’s ability to survive, it also taught them to
Still, in the previously mentioned situations families were present to experience loss of a
particular object, loss could still be felt when families were far from home. On August 13, 1862
Sarah Morgan described the looting, sacking, and shelling of homes near her own in Baton
46
Roberts, January 30, 1863, 1.
47
Cashin, “Widow in a Swamp,” Occupied Women, 180-181.
48
Cashin, “Widow in a Swamp,” Occupied Women, 180.
49
Cashin, “Widow in a Swamp,” Occupied Women, 181.
50
Cashin, “Widow in a Swamp,” Occupied Women, 181.
McNish 13
Rouge by Union soldiers. 51 What remained in the home when her family left represented most, if
not all, of young Sarah Morgan’s worldly possessions. 52 “[The Union] may clothe their negro
women with my clothes…but to take things so sacred to me! Oh my God, teach me to forgive
them!” 53 Despite her frustration with the situation, Sarah could not take any action to change it.
Not only was she many miles from Baton Rouge, but she also lacked the power to alter the loss
of prized objects that were memories of her deceased father and brother. 54
Encroachment and looting by soldiers also occurred, though to a lesser extent, in the
North due to the location of the majority of Civil War battles. During the battle of Gettysburg,
the Northern and Southern armies converged on the small Pennsylvania town and overwhelmed
its population. As the armies moved through town, the women of Gettysburg had to be creative
in their attempts to preserve their valuables. Women of higher classes used their foodstuffs and
cooking skills to coerce soldiers, particularly Southern soldiers into eating a meal but not taking
Food was not always willingly given, as some Confederate soldiers forcefully entered
homes and demanded meals. 56 Mary McAllister, a spinster of 41 who ran a general store, was
not as fortunate as other women. 57 On July 2, Confederate soldiers entered her store, took crocks
51
Dawson, A Confederate Girl’s Diary, 119. It is important to note that Morgan did not witness
these events herself, rather, they were described to her by a Miss Jones.
52
Dawson, A Confederate Girl’s Diary, 119.
53
Dawson, A Confederate Girl’s Diary, 119.
54
Dawson, A Confederate Girl’s Diary, 119-120.
55
Margaret Creighton, “Gettysburg Out of Bounds: Women and Soldiers in the Embattled
Borough, 1863,” in Occupied Women: Gender, Military Occupation, and the American Civil
War, ed. LeeAnn Whites and Alecia P. Long (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University
Press, 2009), 75.
56
Creighton, “Gettysburg Out of Bounds,” in Occupied Women, 77.
57
Mary McAllister, Mary McAllister, ed. Robert L. Brake, Gettysburg College Special
Collections Civil War Manuscripts, Gettysburg, 1. This account was copied by Brake from
newspaper articles published in the Philadelphia Inquirer between June 26 and June 29, 1938.
McNish 14
off the shelves and used them to take molasses from barrels Mary had in the basement. 58 Later
that same evening, more Confederate soldiers entered the home and stole all of the tea in the
store, except for what she had hidden. Even the surgeons that were forcefully residing with her
demanded she cook for them. 59 Before long, the Confederate soldiers had taken so much from
Mary that she barely had enough left to feed herself and her sister Martha, with whom she
lived. 60
Unfortunately, more violent Confederate actions occurred in the town. As the battle raged
on around the heights south of town, Confederate soldiers in town found ways to terrorize the
citizens of Gettysburg. In one such instance, soldiers burst into a home and vandalized the
building and furniture. In a particularly awful offence, soldiers took a jar of black cherries and
poured them down the stairs of the home. The cherries were so dark that they resembled blood
and to make the mess worse, the soldiers poured chaff on top. 61
Experiences of violence and theft left women feeling unsafe in their own homes. Tillie
Pierce, a citizen of Gettysburg, recounted in her memoir the feelings of her neighbor Mrs.
Shriver. Mrs. Shriver’s husband was serving in the Union army at the time of the Battle of
Gettysburg and, because she felt unsafe remaining in her home in town, Mrs. Shriver fled to the
Little Round Top to the home of her father Mr. Weikert. 62 Tillie accompanied Mrs. Shriver and
Though the articles were published over thirty years after her death, it appears that the account
was recorded by Mary herself and then posthumously published in the newspaper.
58
McAllister, Mary McAllister, 5.
59
McAllister, Mary McAllister, 5.
60
McAllister, Mary McAllister, 6. Christiana Lynn Ericson, “‘The World Will Little Note nor
Long Remember’: Women and Gender in the Battle of Gettysburg” (master’s thesis, University
of Maryland College Park, 1996), 10. Ericson provides the clarification that Mary was living
with her sister and brother-in-law, which Brake does not provide.
61
Creighton, “Gettysburg Out of Bounds,” in Occupied Women, 77.
62
Tillie Pierce Alleman, At Gettysburg, or What a Girl Saw and Heard of the Battle (Baltimore,
MD: Butternut and Blue, 1994), 35.
McNish 15
her two children and experienced a great deal while at Mr. Weikert’s home. 63 During Tillie’s
stay, the house became a field hospital, thereby exposing the young girl to the sights and sounds
of severely wounded men. She expressed horror not only about the wounds the soldiers endured,
but the number of wounded that were brought into the home. 64 Though Victorians were familiar
with death, such gruesome sights were far beyond what they ever could have imagined or what
was appropriate for women to see. One young woman, Nellie Aughinbaugh, nearly fainted while
helping a surgeon with an operation. The sights of the operation for a lung wound caused
everything “to get black before [her] eyes.” 65 Yet, there was Tillie Pierce in the Weikert house,
watching as Union soldiers were brought into the home with horrific wounds, despite society
Though many of the actions committed by soldiers were simply petty theft and
vandalism, it taught civilian women that they had to fear the armies. Women were afraid of not
only the loss of essential food items and livestock, but also the potential physical violence that
soldiers could inflict upon them. 66 Antebellum Victorian society had not prepared women for
experiences like these. The emphasis on gentility and reserve had created women who were,
more often then not, forced to cower in corners while soldiers took what they wanted from their
homes. Few women, Mrs. Mew and Mary McAllister being the exceptions, had the courage to
63
Alleman, At Gettysburg, 36.
64
Alleman, At Gettysburg, 58.
65
Louie Dale Leeds, Personal Experiences of a Young Girl during the Battle of Gettysburg
(Washington, D.C.), Gettysburg College Special Collections, Gettysburg, 14. This sources is
quite different from many other sources. Louie Dale Leeds was the daughter of Nellie
Aughinbaugh Leeds and recorded her mothers recollections of the Battle of Gettysburg. It is not
clear when or how these recollections were recorded.
66
Creighton, “Gettysburg Out of Bounds,” in Occupied Women, 77.
McNish 16
stand up to those soldiers who confiscated their property and involved their homes. 67
Conclusions
Although not every woman living in the United States during the Civil War was exposed
to the horrors of invading troops or lack of male presence, those that did had many common
experiences. From working in the field to being terrorized by soldiers, such experiences
highlighted that the women and the society in which they were raised was fundamentally
changed. Societal changes, although a result of the war, were primarily caused by the lack of
men at home to protect their women, something society had always expected of them. The
absence of men forced women into roles which they had not previously considered part of their
womanly duties. Drew Faust, in Mothers of Invention, goes so far to say that the loss of men on
the homefront fundamentally challenged domestic life. 68 Faust poignantly quotes Susan
Middleton from a letter she wrote to a friend. “The realities of my life…[are] so strangely
different from what my character and early promise of my life would have led one to expect.
Anxiety, responsibility, and independence of thought or action are what are particularly
abhorrent to my nature.” 69 Middleton’s words reflect what women across the North and the
South were experiencing, a new life for which society had not prepared them.
An unforeseen effect of the loss of male presence on the homefront was that civilians’
interactions with soldiers fundamentally challenged the commonly held Victorian precepts of
67
This is, of course, not a judgment of Victorian women and their actions in response to soldiers.
The soldiers were armed when they entered homes and took food from civilians who were, for
the most part, unarmed. It is not hard to conceive why civilians accepted the loss of supplies,
rather than fight for them and risk their lives.
68
Susan Middleton to Harriott Cheves, February 22, 1862, Cheves Family Papers, South
Carolina Historical Society, Charleston, SC, quoted in Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention:
Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War (Chapel Hill, NC: The University
of North Carolina Press, 1996), 51, EBSCO ebook.
69
Faust, Mothers of Invention, 52.
McNish 17
polite society. Without men to shield them, women were exposed to a world from which they
had been safeguarded for most of their lives. The realities of war proved to be beyond the bounds
of polite society, which Victorian culture had created. Men barged into domestic spaces and
destroyed them, took food, and terrorized families. For some women, this had become an
unfortunate reality. Other women were forced to work on farms or manage family plantations,
slaves and other family assets. These roles, which women assumed during the war, were far from
anything society had imagined for them. Though many women did not relish in their new roles,
as is clear from the writings of Susan Middleton, some women, like Clara Barton, the famous
founder of the American Red Cross, continued to pursue the work they started during the war. 70
In her thesis, Christiana Ericson examined various accounts of women during the Battle
of Gettysburg. In all of these accounts she found “a sense of ambiguity of who was in control.” 71
This, according to Ericson, highlighted just how much the prescribed societal roles of woman
had begun to deteriorate. 72 This is seen not only in the accounts from Gettysburg, but is also
seen, in some form or another, in all of the accounts discussed herein. Whether it was Sarah
Morgan’s interaction with the slave woman who gave her supper or Mary Livermore’s encounter
with women in the fields in the mid-west, women had moved beyond their antebellum roles in
the home. Without their heads of household, women began to take charge of duties that were
formerly not their own. As a result of women taking charge, a shift in gender roles for both males
70
Clara Barton spearheaded a number of projects after the Civil War ended. Directly after the
war, she began a project to confirm the identities of missing soldiers who had died during the
war and inform their families of the whereabouts of their sons and husbands. See Salem Press
Biographical Encyclopedia, s.v. “Clara Barton,” accessed April 24, 2014,
http://eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds/detail?sid=4d021593-4a75-472b-ac9b-
9897738d6e0c%40sessionmgr111&vid=9&hid=109&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#
db=ers&AN=88806959.
71
Ericson, “‘The World Will Little Note nor Long Remember,’” 17.
72
Ericson, “‘The World Will Little Note nor Long Remember,’” 18.
McNish 18
and females occurred, particularly a rebellion against submissiveness, as can be seen in the case
of Mary McAllister. 73 The experiences women undertook fundamentally challenged the roles of
women in Victorian society and in the Victorian home. As a result of leaving for war, Victorian
men pushed women out of their traditional roles as homemakers and genteel ladies and into jobs
which gave them greater independence and autonomy during the war. Although many women
returned to their former roles after the war, society was forever changed.
73
Ericson, “‘The World Will Little Note nor Long Remember,’” 22, 24.
McNish 19
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