Women Soldiers in the Civil War
Forbiden to Bear Arms, Many Women Served Posing as Men.
Sep 29, 2009
In the nineteenth century war was definitely a man’s occupation. Thanks to the work of Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War, women gained acceptance, however grudgingly, as nurses of the sick and wounded. But for a woman to wield a gun and suffer wounds and possible death was too horrible for men to contemplate.
Why Women Wanted to Fight in the Civil War
For the most part women were expected to stay home, patiently waiting until there men would return from war. Some married women had children to take care of, but others wanted to take a more active role in defending their country. “I am like a pent-up volcano. I wish I had a field for my energies,” one woman confided in her journal. “I hate common (woman’s) life, a life of visiting, dressing, and tattling.”
Why did they want to enlist? Some sought adventure, and a means to escape the straitjacket of Victorian social convention, where a woman was supposed to be feminine, and a creature of emotion, not intellect or strength. Others were fiercely patriotic, and wanted to serve their country on the battle front. Still others wanted to be near their serving husbands or sweethearts. Many kept their secret their whole lives, so giving an estimate of how many women served in the Civil War is hard, if not impossible. Most educated guesses list the numbers as something between 500 and 1,000 women.
Women in Civil War Armies
To the modern mind it seems incredible that any woman could enlist without detection, much less serve for years. Yet several things have to be taken into account. First, recruit physical examinations were often perfunctory at best. Doctors were mainly interested if a prospective soldier had enough teeth to bite a cartridge, could hear enough to obey commands, and had enough fingers to grasp a gun and pull a trigger. All else was secondary. Unless you had an obvious disability, or signs of a dreaded disease like tuberculosis, you passed.
Then, too, uniforms—especially the ubiquitous sack coat—were often ill-fitting and baggy, perfect to hide the feminine form. Much of the war was fought in wooded areas, where a woman could easily slip behind a tree if she needed to answer the call of nature. If she was careful, she could also bathe or wash in secret as well.
But a woman’s greatest defense against discovery was Victorian male assumptions. Sex roles were sharply defined in the nineteenth century. Women and men were supposed to act and dress in certain ways. Male soldiers might overlook little signs that their companion was a woman, simply because they didn’t expect a woman to be in the army.
Women were usually exposed—literally and figuratively—when they were wounded. Surgeons would tend wounds, and in the course of a treatment discover that “he” was really a “she.” In a few cases, women soldiers were discovered when they gave birth to a child.
Women in the Union Army
Sara Emma Edmonds, a.k.a. “Franklin Thompson,” was an example of a woman who fought for the North. She enlisted in the 2nd Michigan Volunteer Regiment. In an ironic twist, “Private Thompson” was recruited to go down south as a spy. Once she posed as a Confederate officer. On another occasion, she played a black female slave. Much like the film Victor/Victoria, it was the case of a woman playing a man playing a woman. Edmonds survived the war and eventually received a veteran’s pension.
Women in the Confederate Army
The South had its own stereotypes of feminine behavior. Ladies were expected to be on a -pedestal, to be feminine and completely under male domination. Sisters Mary and Molly Bell joined the Confederate army as “Tom Parker” and “Bob Martin.” They successfully served for two years until being finally exposed as women. General Jubal Early was both shocked and scandalized, branding the two women “common camp followers.” In other words, the implication was that they were common prostitutes. But there is no evidence they were ever prostitutes. Early’s outrage was a prime example of the male chauvinism of the period.
Sources:
Elizabeth Leonard, All the Daring of a Soldier: Women of the Civil War Armies (Norton, 1999)
Mary Elizabeth Massey, Bonnet Brigades (Knopf, 1966)
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