Women Find New Power and Independence
The American Civil War illustrates how gender roles can be transformed when circumstances demand that women be allowed to enter into previously male-dominated positions of power and independence. This was the first time in American history that women played a significant role in a war effort, and by the end of the war the notion of true womanhood had been redefined.
During the decades prior to the Civil War, female activists flocked to the abolitionist movement and exerted considerable pressure on the Southern slavocracy. Authors like Lydia Maria Child published pamphlets and books condemning the institution of slavery. Although many male politicians searched for a negotiated settlement, female abolitionists refused to accept any compromise on slavery. During the first two years of the war, women delivered speeches, conducted letter-writing campaigns, and pressured President Abraham Lincoln to free all slaves held in bondage in the South.
First National Women's Political Organization
Feminists and suffragists had agreed to suspend the women's rights conventions until after the Civil War, but many of those same women continued the fight to abolish slavery. In 1863 two leading feminist reformers, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the Woman's National Loyal League, the first national women's political organization in the United States, to organize support for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would end slavery forever.
At the May 1863 meeting of the newly formed Woman's National Loyal League, Lucy Stone reminded the members that while women did not yet have the vote, they had what the U.S. Constitution guarantees to all citizens, the right to petition the government. The League's other speakers likened them all to the women of the Revolution who "were not wanting in heroism and self-sacrifice."
Stanton and Anthony laid the groundwork for the League by publishing an "Appeal to the Women of the Republic" in the New York Tribune, an anti-slavery newspaper. They then circulated the Appeal as a tract that included the call for the convention. Anthony opened the convention and nominated Lucy Stone as president of the meeting. Other officers of the convention included such well-known figures as Martha Wright, Amy Post, Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Angelina Grimke and Ernestine Rose.
Nine months later, in February 1864, the League's first 100,000 signatures were delivered to Senator Charles Sumner in two trunks. Each contained a scroll of the amendment petitions glued end to end. He accepted the petitions with his speech The Prayer of 100,000. During the next two years, they enlisted the assistance of numerous other leading feminists. Widely praised for its work, the League ultimately collected some 400,000 signatures.
Before war's end, their signatures, combined with other voices and pressure from Lincoln, persuaded the U.S. Senate (April 8, 1864) and the House of Representatives (January 31, 1865) to pass the proposed Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery. It was ratified by enough states to become law in December 1865.
New Frontiers for Women
When the Civil War broke out, men from all over the country enlisted in the military, leaving behind jobs and duties that women quickly filled. The war gave women the opportunity to enter the public sphere, be involved in national affairs, and function with a type of independence foreign to most of them.
Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, a female soldier from the 153rd Regiment serving the New York State Volunteers, was one of the few who openly wrote home about her gender and the struggles she faced in the course of the war. In one letter she wrote her family "I am as independent as a hog on ice." She saw the war as a source of freedom from her strict home.
Women did not have to be soldiers to experience this new independence. Women on the home front ran businesses, joined national organizations and supported the cause through any means available. Many were excited to leave behind the strict restrictions society had placed on them. L