When the Men Went to War When she learned that her husband, Lucius, had enlisted in the Union Army, Alice Chapin became distraught. She sobbed uncontrollably and pleaded with him, writing in a letter, "Now my dear husband let me tell you I do not verily believe I could live & bid you good bye to go in the Army how can you for a moment think of such a thing, can you leave me? can you leave our babes? no, no, no." Years later Lucius Chapin would recall that he had enlisted in early 1862 out of patriotism, but at the time he emphasized the economic benefits to his family, who lived in Putnam, County, Ind., between Indianapolis and Terre Haute. Chapin had tried a number of occupations by the early 1860s and made a successful living at none of them. Alice's ill health, probably stemming from pregnancy and childbirth, had left them with large medical bills. Lucius's family blamed Alice for holding their son back. Even Alice's father conceded that someone needed to care for Alice while Lucius used the Army to make a new start. Despite his wife's pleading and the death of their infant son soon after his enlistment, Lucius served throughout the war, rising to the rank of first sergeant in Company M of the 4th Indiana Cavalry. Alice and their young daughter spent the war in Terre Haute with her parents. Alice did reconcile herself to Lucius's war service, even praising his courage. A year after Lucius's enlistment - and her impassioned plea against it - she wrote, "my darling, my brave, my Soldier lad, your wife is proud to think of you standing firmly to your duty, a Man, the "noblest work of God."" This was a bleak period in the war for the North, still reeling from the bloody disaster at Fredericksburg, Va., but Alice was "hoping all the time to hear of Battles, or Victories in some shape." In short, contrary to many recent historical accounts of women during the Civil War, Alice Chapin did not make use of the conflict to liberate herself from woman's sphere. The Chapins" situation was not unusual. Though women often protested against their husbands" decision to enlist, like Alice they typically reconciled themselves to the fact. Nineteenth-century Americans regarded women and men as belonging to separate spheres. A woman's sphere was the home, for which she was presumably fitted by her gentler, more patient nature, and by the physical and mental weakness that made her unable to participate in man's sphere: the rough and tumble of politics or public life. In his examination of soldiers" letters, the historian James M. McPherson found both Union and Confederate husbands constructed extensive rationales for their absence from family responsibilities: they argued that by protecting their country, they protected their families. And they appealed to their wives" sense of patriotism and honor. Although husbands felt a need to justify themselves to wives who complained of raising children or running a household without a male breadwinner, in a patriarchal society, there was little recourse for a wife such as Alice Chapin but to accept her husband's decision. It's true that, by the time of the Civil War, many women were using the characteristics of woman's sphere itself to gain entree to a wider role. Women's greater piety and stronger moral sense, after all, made it reasonable for them to speak out on moral issues like drinking and slavery. Such involvement was controversial but had become common. Harriet Beecher Stowe's abolitionist novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," featured frequent contrasts between wives whose naïve moral objections to slavery are vindicated despite their husbands" more worldly acceptance of the institution. Still, many women and men - in agreement that women should use their influence for the betterment of society - would have flinched from the proponents of woman's equality, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who insisted on rights such as the vote. An 1857 editorial in the Greencastle, Ind., newspaper encouraged women to take up temperance reform in order to save their sons from the saloonkeepers, but it explicitly distinguished this call from appeals to women's rights, which the editorialist rejected. The war did open opportunities for women to enter the public sphere. The shortage of nurses, which was created by the war's labor needs, allowed women to move into that occupation. Indiana's wartime governor, Oliver P. Morton, recruited women to tend to Hoosier soldiers in hospitals. Women took up factory jobs, working in the Indianapolis arsenal. An observer described the "blushing young virgins and elderly matrons" cheerfully making cartridges "intended to let daylight through some man's heart." Women also formed aid societies to provide clothing and food for the soldiers, and held bazaars whose profits purchased even more provisions. In Greencastle, more than 100 women belonged to the Soldiers" Aid Society and many of its leaders were wives of prominent local men who had often been active in prewar reform. Cosima Sadd was not only secretary of the Greencastle society, but worked at a Louisville, Ky., hospital, ensuring that patients received goods sent from Indiana, including cash and boxes of fruit, cakes and eggs. Alice Chapin, however, was one of the many women who did not participate in such societies, but instead sent care packages to their husbands or sons individually. Alice sent Lucius parcels containing a turkey, pies, cakes, soap and stamps - but no butter, "as every bit in the Country is bought up by those who are sending Boxes & they are many I assure you." Sarah Hawley, the wife of Lucius's family minister, sent her son a ham when he fell ill in Alabama. These packages were part of their efforts to continue woman's sphere - taking care of their menfolk - despite the men's absence from home. Like many wives, Alice missed having her child's father participate in parental duties. Puzzled by their toddler's "ungovernable fits of passion," she lamented: "Oh how we need home and Papa!" Presumably Lucius's influence was needed to make their daughter the "good kind amiable woman" her mother hoped she would become. Lucius did try to provide discipline, explaining to her in one letter why she must obey her mother and why corporal punishment was necessary. The historian Nina Silber has recently argued that although Northern women's civic participation was encouraged and did expand because of the Civil War, there still remained obstacles to women's involvement in the public sphere. Not only were they deprived of their breadwinners, often causing hardship, but their involvement was also predicated on their serving the government, not the government serving their needs. In addition, couples like the Chapins demonstrated women's continued belief in their traditional sphere. Alice Chapin did not want the vote or equal rights: she wanted Lucius at home to take care of his family. If Lucius joined the army for economic reasons, his enlistment did not solve all the Chapins" financial worries. The bounty money went to pay their debts. Alice learned some of the soldiers" aid helped support soldiers" families but was disappointed by the amount she received. She found a position as a schoolteacher, but Lucius refused to give her permission to take it. He did not want "a "School Ma'am" for a Wifey," he wrote, so Alice gave up the idea, even reflecting that she might not have "passed muster" anyway. She then tried to make money drying and canning produce. When the war ended, the Chapins were still unsure how Lucius would make a living - he, too, now suffered from ill health, brought on by the hardships of wartime service. After the war, the Chapins had two more children. Lucius eventually prospered as a lawyer, local Republican politician and mayor of Greencastle. Alice became active in charitable causes, an acceptable role for a middle-class woman. She collected relief materials for victims of major fires that swept Greencastle in the mid-1870s and played a leading role, along with Lucius, in what was called the woman's temperance crusade of 1873, in which small-town women across the Midwest occupied saloons in an effort to shame owners and patrons into sobriety. Even after the crusade wound down, Alice remained president of the local Ladies" Temperance League. As a wedding present for the daughter of Greencastle's Republican congressman, Alice constructed a "handsome bouquet" and wrote an accompanying poem describing the bonds of marriage as being "as strong as steel" while "Soft and sweet are the bonds of love." It was an appropriate sentiment from a woman who accepted her sphere and had signed letters to her soldier husband "Wifey." Nicole Etcheson is the Alexander M. Bracken professor of history at Ball State University and the author of the prize-winning "A Generation at War: The Civil War Era in a Northern Community."