ike Little Women author Louisa May Alcott, who served as a nurse, there was an urge to contribute. She wrote in the beginning of her Hospital Sketches: "I want to do something."
The Civil War also granted women greater access to newly developing industrial jobs and economic household power. With more and more men entering the conflict, women were required to oversee farm production, plantations and rural businesses. These tasks became increasingly difficult in the South following the introduction of the Union blockade. Unable to secure goods from foreign sources, Southern women assumed responsibility for sustaining the food supply for both the troops and the home front.
Other shortages forced them to produce cotton and wool clothing, construct tents, sew flags and manufacture medical bandages. Wealthy women supervised lumber mills, widows served as government clerks, and other women became schoolteachers. Although critical shortages would contribute to their ultimate defeat, Southern women performed duties well beyond their prewar domestic sphere, and their efforts enabled the Confederate Army to withstand and survive countless material hardships.
Wartime production created an unprecedented need for industrial goods in the North. Clothing, munitions and other manufactured goods were in high demand, and with the loss of income because their husbands and sons were fighting at the front, women flocked to the mills. These opportunities, however, did not result in increased prosperity.
Women were forced to accept substandard wages, and many barely escaped starvation. In New York City, more than twenty thousand women were employed in the clothing industry as stitchers and sewers. Working fifteen-hour days, they were forced to pay for their own thread and any damaged goods, but these women refused to accept their fate.
In 1863, they formed the Working Women's Union, and by the end of the war, they were able to mobilize female clothing workers throughout the Northern industrial belt. These efforts eventually helped to produce greater female participation in the emerging American labor movement, which significantly contributed to the rise of modern feminism in post-Civil War America.
Despite all the adversities and difficulties women suffered on the home front, their contributions on the military front as nurses and spies provided vital support throughout the war. In mid-1861, Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to earn an medical degree, helped to organize the Women's Central Association of Relief, which helped to inspire the creation of the United States Sanitary Commission.
The Sanitary Commission subsequently raised funds for medical supplies, recruited and trained nurses, and labored to improve sanitation in Army camps. Through the establishment of local chapters, the commission ensured that soldiers received their back pay and pensions. It provided help for disabled veterans, obtained jobs for soldiers' wives, and by the war's end, raised more than $50 million.
Dorothea Dix, a prison reformer and advocate for the mentally ill, also trained nurses and was eventually appointed as Superintendent of Army Nurses. Clara Barton labored in hospitals and battlefields as a one-woman aid society. She helped families locate relatives missing in action, and helped to provide a dignified grave site for more than thirteen thousand men who perished at the notorious Andersonville prison in Georgia. These accomplishments generated long-term gains for women.
Women in the South followed similar paths. Several middle- and upper-class women quickly erected army hospitals following the outbreak of hostilities. In Virginia, Sally Tompkins, who later received a commission as a captain in the Confederate Army, established a hospital in Richmond. Other women served in military stations at the front and helped to create fund-raising agencies similar to the United States Sanitary Commission.
Hospital work allowed women to show their patriotism, help maintain soldiers' morale, and genuinely contributed to the Confederate war effort. At the start of the