The Civil War was a horrible war that pitted North against South, brother against brother. It was very destructive to America, but it also brought about many important changes for women. It greatly affected different groups of women in society in numerous ways. There were three groups of women that the Civil War affected the most. They were the Southern African-American women, the Northern working women, and the suffragists. If it had not been for this war, many great achievements for women would not have occurred. Because of this war, women were able to break through yet a few more constraints that society had held against them. For former slaves, the end of the war meant many things. First and foremost, it meant that they were no longer slaves bound to a master. Instead, they were human beings able to support their own families. Besides leaving the plantations, the first act of freedom that many former slaves did was to legalize their marriages. In slavery, black women and men had been married without the benefit of a prescribed civil or religious ritual. Throughout the last two years of the war and during the first year of Reconstruction, ex-slaves flocked to ministers and judges to legalize their marriages. Couples who had lived as husband and wife for thirty years were eager to make their marital and family ties legal and binding. Officials of the Freedmen's Bureau, a network of agencies established by the US government to monitor the former slaves' transition to freedom, urged the ex-slaves to do this. This was astounding for African-Americans. For the first time they could now become legally married and not have to worry about their families being split apart. With freedom, black women enjoyed new roles as nurturers of their own families. During slavery, black women worked long hours for their owners and had little or no time to make good homes for their families. For the women who had been slaves, the true benefit of freedom was the opportunity to be homemakers for their own families. Throughout the South, freedwomen devoted all of their extra time to take classes in homemaking, where they learned new ways to sew and cook. This might not seem as revolutionary as winning the vote or being able to get an education, but to the African-American women it was a dream come true. They were finally going to be able to take care of their families like white women did, and this was a cause for joy. Few freedwomen could afford to be full-time homemakers. Their families needed the money that they could earn. Most black women did the same work that they had done as slaves. This time however, they were paid for the work. One mother said she could die happy because her children would grow up in freedom. The black women's new status as an emancipated person granted her the right to protect her family from harm as best she could. She extended the idea of family to not only her kin but also her community. "Out of the ashes of slavery and Civil War rose a generation of African-American women who would dedicate themselves to the improvement of their race." Although the war affected the North much less than the South, Northern women had many problems returning to normal life. Many women had difficulties holding onto wartime jobs, whether with the government or elsewhere. Some women had to work for the first time to support their injured husbands. Others lost their jobs to male veterans. As reported by the New York Herald, The ladies employed in the Treasury Department are feeling considerable alarm at the prospective introduction of a bill in Congress to dispense with their services, that room may be made for the large number of discharged soldiers now seeking place under government patronage. In the main, it would appear that the question will present itself to Congress in the simple light of choice between the family of a soldier who has fallen in the service, and the soldier whose life has escaped the vicissitudes of battle and been spared to coin his own domestic fortunes in a wider field than is vouchsafed to the widow and orphans of his less fortunate comrades. Those who were lucky enough to keep their jobs were paid less than they had been during the war. Women were first employed during the Civil War by the federal government, mainly the Treasury Department. This started when Francis Spinner was appointed as Treasurer of the United States in 1861. It was Mr. Spinner who first hired these so-called "government girls." He defended them against critics, praised their efficiency, and stressed the economy of hiring women. After the war, Spinner fought to retain them in the Treasury Department. When he retired, women's jobs in the government had been secured. This is confirmed by the New York Herald, who reported, There has been some little reduction in the working force of female clerks in several of the government bureaus recently, and the trepidation among the remaining ones is naturally great. They believe the discharge of a few surplus clerks is but the prelude to a general slaughter of the innocents, which is expected to begin when Congress gets fairly at work providing for the maimed heroes of the war, Really they are in no danger. This was comforting for the "government girls" because it helped them see that, despite all the controversy, their jobs had been permanently secured. This was the first time this had ever happened. Now, at least women had their foothold in the workplace. During the war changes were brought to the in budgetary allocations, this resulted in increased work in the Treasury Department, which caused a need for hundreds of new employees. Most of these employees were women because the men were fighting in the war. Other government departments eventually saw the progress that the Treasury was making with women and decided to also hire women. The post office in Rockford, Illinois hired a woman postmistress after her husband, who had been the postmaster, died in battle. The current President, Abraham Lincoln, made this decision. He wrote, Yesterday little indorsements of mine went to you in two cases of Postmasterships sought for widows whose husbands had fallen in the battles of this war. These cases occurring on the same day, brought me to reflect more attentively than I had before done as to what is fairly due from us here in the dispensing of patronage toward the men, who, by fighting our battles, bear the chief burden of saving our country. My conclusion is, that other claims and qualifications being equal, they have the better right, and this is especially applicable to the deceased soldier's family. It was also during the war that the Post Office first employed women in the Dead Letter Office. The War Department also started appointing women copyists, while the Interior Department hired a few women clerks and copyists. In the postwar period the increasingly heavy workload in the Pension Office put hundreds of women on the Interior Department's payroll. The need for seamstresses increased during the war, as the army needed clothing, bedding, and tents. Although sewing machines were used a lot, many women sewed with their own needles while thousands of women wished they could work at all. The numbers of women who wanted work kept wages at a disgracefully low level. Blame also rests on the government's contract system, which pitted the women against crooked contractors who were bent only on making money. These contractors ignored suggested government wage scales, knowing that if a woman was dissatisfied, she could easily be replaced. In response to this invasion of women in what was once considered a man's place, a trade newspaper called Fincher's Trades' Review noted, "We shall spare no effort to check this most unnatural invasion of our firesides by which the order of nature is reversed, and women, the loveliest of God's creature, reduced to the menial conditions of savage life." Prominent community leaders and the members of the press attempted to educate the public on the desperate plight of the garment workers. Considering the circumstances, it was not surprising that the women organized a protest movement. They were for better wages, shorter hours, and safer, more sanitary working conditions. Following the protests, the garment workers formed associations. On November 18, 1863, fifty-three women who worked in New York's sewing rooms met in a closed session. This organization was called the Workingwomen's Protective Union and it was devoted to improving working conditions. These associations obtained some small gains for female workers, despite the opposition of male workers who said that women didn't really need to work at all. Not only were women going back to work after the Civil War, but they also resumed the fight for their rights. After the Civil War and the victory for the Union, Ernestine Rose proclaimed, "Freedom, my friends, does not come from the cloud like a meteor…It does not come without great efforts and great sacrifices; all who love liberty have to labor for it." This quote caused women to once again resume their fight for women's freedom. From these battles came many new ideas for achieving social and political equality for all women. The origins of the postwar women's rights movement lay in the prewar abolition movement. The two movements had been closely linked for about thirty years. Just as a slave was said to be a person with certain inalienable rights to the person and property, so was a woman a person with the same inalienable rights. And just as abolition was a social movement that collected people's energy and power to abolish slavery, the women's rights movement before the Civil War was the first independent movement of American women to act for female suffrage. This movement challenged the unequal social and political position of women. As Elizabeth Cady Stanton so aptly put it, "Let women live as she should…Let her know that her spirit is fitted for as high a sphere as man's, and that her soul requires food as pure and exalted as his." For woman's spirit to share this "high sphere" with a man's, she needed certain rights, especially political rights. The Seneca Falls convention began the movement to demand women's suffrage. Suffrage, they said, would give women other rights and protections they didn't have. For example, single working women had to pay taxes but had no voice in how their money was used because they could not vote. Amazingly, American men rejected their powerful battle cry for the War for Independence: "No taxation without representation." They were doing to the American woman that which the British had done to them. This time men saw nothing wrong with this injustice. After the Civil War, leaders of the women's rights movement looked to the United States Constitution for inspiration. They adopted the very same strategy for female suffrage that had been used by the proponents of African-American suffrage. The right to vote was the individuals right as a citizen and provided the foundation for the democratic government, that the North had just fought to protect. In the immediate post-Civil War years, women's rights leaders maintained that voting was a basic right shared by all citizens, men and women, white and black. It was a great blow to the fight for women's suffrage when, on July 9, 1868, the government ratified the 14th amendment, giving black men the rights of an American citizen, but ignoring the rights of women. This amendment was ratified because President Lincoln's hope was the Civil War would not only free the slaves but also give them the right to vote. They would not be truly free until they were citizens. On February 3, 1870, the 15th Amendment was ratified, destroying women's hopes that African-Americans and women would earn the vote together. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was an African-American female suffragist living at the time and she wrote a poem called, Dialogue on Women's Rights. This excerpt perfectly explains women's mixed feelings on the ratification of the 15th Amendment. "Some thought it would never do For us in Southern lands, To change the fetters on our wrists For the ballot in our hands. Now if you don't believe 'twas right To crowd us from the track How can you push your wife aside And try to hold her back?" Even though all of this was a great blow for all American women, they still did not give up and continued their fight to win the vote. As you can now see, the Civil War played a major part in changing women's roles in life. Because of the Civil War, African-American women were able to do many things they would have never thought possible, such as marriage. And because the men were off fighting in the war, many women were given jobs for the first time and some were even able to hold onto them afterwards, which was groundbreaking because women could then provide for themselves. Last but not least, women, now being able to work, focused onto their greatest barrier, their inability to vote. So they held the Seneca Falls convention where they decided to change that inability to an ability. All in all, the Civil War was majorly influential in helping women's place in the world. Bibliography Books Hunter, Tera W. To 'Joy My Freedom. Massey, Mary Elizabeth. Bonnet Brigades. Sigerman, Harriet. "An unfinished battle: American Women, 1848-1865." The Young Oxford history of women in the United States. 1983 ed., 5: 19, 22-23, 25 Sigerman, Harriet. "Laborers for Liberty: American Women, 1865-1890." The Young Oxford history of women in the United States. 1983 ed., 6: 27, 37-40 Periodicals "The Widow of a Soldier made a Postmistress-Noble Letter from the President." New York Tribune, 29 July 1863. "The Lady Clerks of the Treasury Department." New York Herald, 13 November 1865. "The Female Government Employes." The New York Herald, 10 December 1865.