Rosie+Women+of+the+War

= =

=__Women Of The Civil War__=

toc = __Women Spies: Rose O'Neal Greenhow__ = Rose O'Neal Greenhow was born in Port Tobacco, Maryland in 1817 as Maria Rosatta O'Neal. Her father, John O'Neal, was supposedly murdered by one of his slaves in 1817. Her mother Eliza O'Neal was left with four daughters and a farm to manage on her own. In her teenage years orphaned, Greenhow was invited to live with her aunt in Washington, D.C. . During her time in D.C. Greenhow befriended several politicians like South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun. In 1859 Greenhow began her spying for the Confederacy, using coded messages she sent Greenhow is given credit for the victory of the First Battle of Bull Run and Manassas. Greenhow used her beauty and cunning to get the information she needed from her Union politician friends. As Greenhow continued her spying there was suspicion of her actions and she was put under house arrest in 1861 by Union Secret Service leader Allan Pinkerton. Greenhow was transferred to the Old Capital Prison in Washington D.C. and was accompanied by her daughter Rose. Despite imprisonment Greenhow continued getting messages to the Confederacy in cryptic notes which traveled in unlikely places such as the inside of a woman's bun of hair. After Greenhow's hearing in 1862, she was exiled to the Confederate states for the rest of the war but she was greeted warmly by President Jefferson Davis who then sent her to tour countries in Europe as a propagandist for the the Confederate Army. Unfortunately on her return trip home Greenhow was intercepted by Union forces on October 1, 1864. Fearing imprisonment she fled in a rowboat however when the rowboat capzied she was carried down to the ocean depths by the 2,000 worth of gold around her neck from her book.

__Clara Barton__


Clarissa Harlowe Barton was born on December 25, 1821 from parents Stephen and Sarah Barton in Oxford, Massachusetts. Her father Stephen worked as a farmer and a horse breeder while her mother Sarah was a stay at home mom for all five children. Clara was the youngest of   all five children. The first experience Clara had with nursing and was her inspiration to keep persuing her career was when her brother became ill after falling from their barn when she was 11 years old. Clara learned to manage his medicines and cures which helped her take care of her brother for 3 long years before he passed away. Clara's first battle experience started on April 20 1862 after the First Battle of Bull Run where she created a group that gave and used the medicine and help that was needed from the wounded soldiers. July 1862, she got permission to go behind the lines, even reaching some of the most gruesome battlefields of the war and served during the Siege of Petersburg and Richmond, Virginia. From 1864 to 1865 she was appointed by General Benjamin Butler as the "lady in charge" of all the hospitals in the battle of the Army of James and the official woman in charge of the search for the missing men by President Lincoln himself. "The door that nobody else will go in at, seems always to open widely for me." said Clara Barton. Clara Barton was a courageous woman, who was never afraid to even jump in to the battle field if it mean that she could save someone. Clara Barton was a huge influence in women's suffrage and in nursing itself. She also founded the American Red Cross Foundation which she was president of for 20 years. Clara passed away on April 12, 1912.

__Julia Ward Howe__
Julia Ward Howe was one of the most important women of the Civil War. She was a poet and she wrote one of the most famous Civil War songs, "John Brown's Body."One night in 1861,Howe was sleeping in at the Willard Hotel and she was thinking about the war hymn she had heard earlier that day. She got up and got a piece of paper and began to write a song. The opening lines to the song "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming lord." made Abraham Lincoln cry the first time he heard the song. Overnight the song became the Union anthem.

__Dorothea Dix__
She was born in the town of Hamden, Main on April 4, 1802 by her parents Joseph Dix and Mary Bigelow. She grew up first in Worcester, Massachusetts with 2 other siblings whom she was the oldest of. Her second home would be her grandmother's house in Boston. Her father was an itinerant worker while her mother stayed at home and attended to the family. However, life at home for Dorothea was not great with her alcoholic family and abusive father, she ran away at age 12. In 1821 she started a school in Boston for the "well to do" families and around the same time she started teaching the poor and neglected children in her home. In1831 she established her second school in Boston. This was a successful model school for girls  until 1836, when her health failed. In hopes of a cure, she traveled to England where she had met the Rathbone family. The Rathbones were Quakers and define social reformers. This is where Dorothea first found the passion to become a social reformer. Henceforth, Dix traveled from New Hampshire to Louisiana keeping track of the condition of pauper lunatics, publishing memorials to state legislatures, and devoting much of her time to work with committees to try to make bill for the people she was helping. The Bill for the Indegent Insane was her idea and went through both the houses of congress before is was vetoed by the president and was not executed. During the Civil War Dorothea was appointed Superintendent of Union Army Nurses, which was an honorable role. She helped take care of both Union and Confederate soldiers. Unfortunately, Dorothea Dix died on July 17, 1887.

__Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell__
Elizabeth was born in 1821 and her younger sister was born in 1826. They were born in England and their father was a sugar refiner. Both sisters were among the first women to get medical degrees. They founded their own hospital and medical school and encouraged other women to become doctors. The two sisters and their family came to the U.S.A. in 1833. Elizabeth had to support her family when their father died by teaching. Elizabeth was inspired to become a doctor by a friend who was dying of uterine disorder and was too embarrassed to tell a male doctor and didn't get the right medical help in time. Elizabeth then started medical school in 1847 and later Emily finished her medical school in 1854. During the Civil War, Elizabeth taught nurses to support the Union Army. In 1868, Elizabeth founded Women's Medical College of the New York Infirmary. Elizabeth went back to England in 1869 and Emily was left in charge of Women's Medical College. Elizabeth became professor of gynecology at the London School of Medicine for Women. Emily worked at the Medical College until 1900 upon her retirement. Both sisters died in 1910.

Women organized associations and groups to do what ever they could locally to help out the men who where soon going to war. Women mostly stayed at home preparing their men for war doing whatever jobs that needed to be done. There were three very important jobs that women were in charge of during the Civil War: Preparing the men for war, sewing and nursing. Women also donated hundreds of thousands of dolars worth of supplies for the Union and Confederate armies. Women were in charge of helping the wounded soldiers, producing ammunition and other military materials, and comforting the ill. As woman's husbands left for war, the women then became in charge of their husbands' businesses. Women were now running plantation, farms and any other company that was left for them.

__**Women's Clothing**__
Women's clothing in the 1860s changed greatly from the previous decade. The hoop skirts were at an all time high -- to make the waist look smaller -- and sleeves kept decreasing in narrowness. Skirt designs were complex and the discovery of aniline dyes (made from coal) made the colors much brighter. Corsets, often made with whalebone, were used to sculpt the body to achieve the popular silhouette of a flat and narrow front and large skirts in the back. Informal day dresses would have a high neckline with lace detailing and long sleeves. In the evening the neckline would be much lower with short sleeves and lace gloves. Skirts were often made of silk. For an outer layer shawls, capes, and cropped jackets were worn, because they were the only pieces that would fit with the large skirts. Fashions were almost all copied from the Europeans looks, but much slower. A popular look in France could come to America about a year later.

__Women Soldiers__
Both the Union and Confederate armies forbade the enlistment of women. Women soldiers of the Civil War therefore assumed masculine names, disguised themselves as men, and hid the fact they were female. Estimates place as many as 250 women in the ranks of the Confederate army. An 1896 story about Mary Stevens Jenkins, who died in 1881, tells an equally brief tale. She enlisted in a Pennsylvania regiment when still a schoolgirl, remained in the army two years, received several wounds, and was discharged without anyone ever realizing she was female. The existence of soldier-women was no secret during or after the Civil War. The reading public, at least, was well aware that these women rejected Victorian social constraints confining them to the domestic sphere. Their motives were open to speculation, perhaps, but not their actions, as numerous newspaper stories and obituaries of women soldiers testified.Like the men, there were women who lived in camp, suffered in prisons, and died for their respective causes.

__African American__
Harriet Tubman was born as a slave in Maryland's Dorchester County around 1820. At age five or six, she began to work as a house servant and several years later she was sent to work in the fields. Around 1844 she married a free black named John Tubman. In 1849 scared she and her fellow slaves would be sold, Harriet ran away. She set out one night on foot and with some assistance from a friendly white woman. She followed North Star by night and made her way to Pennsylvania and then Philadelphia. She then started escorting slaves back to the North Starting with her sister and her sister's   children as well as her brother. By 1856, Tubman's capture would have brought a $40,000 reward from the South. During a ten-year span she made 19 trips into the South and escorted over 300 slaves to freedom. During the Civil War Harriet Tubman worked for the Union as a cook, a nurse and a spy. She was first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the raid on the Combahee River which liberated more than seven hundred slaves. Tubman served as a nurse in Port Royal, preparing remedies from local plants and aiding soldiers. She died in her home in Auburn, New York on March 10, 1913.

media type="youtube" key="u-JjZi2bigk" height="385" width="480"