North & South grown
apart – different labor systems, economies, social & political
values;
Northern abolitionists
increased criticism of slavery, South defended it with increased vigor;
1860 Abraham Lincoln
president – vowed not to let slavery expand into new states;
South felt politically
vulnerable – worried violent slave uprisings.
independent nation,
Confederate States of America;
War April 1861.
Claims more than 600,000
lives, white & black;
Black women &
children abandoned - fled to Union army camps;
North & south women
formed thousands of aid societies – get clothes, food, medical supplies
to troops;
North collected $15
million worth, raising money door to door, selling needlework, holding
concerts;
women ran farms &
businesses;
U.S. Treasury Dept hires
women to replace male clerks;
Lincoln approved of
hiring war widows;
Criticism of their
morals, worried about women as distraction – fired at war’s
end;
South women new public
visibility;
New Orleans mainly
female population;
sewing bees to make
rebel banners, taught schoolchildren rebel songs,
pinned Confederate flags
to dress,
spit at Union
soldiers;
3,200 women nurses:
example of British
Florence Nightingale;
Doubts about whether
proper for “refined modest ladies” to care for “strange men
and crude soldiers from all walks of life.”
Union Army appointed
Dorothea Dix superintendent of female nurses;
1840s Dix teacher who
visited Mass. Jail – horrified that mentally ill thrown in with
criminals;
establishment of 32
mental hospitals;
war nurses experience as
administrators; great risk;
women as spies; soldiers
disguised as men;
cooking &
laundry;
Union General Joe
Hooker;
1863 Stanton &
Anthony - National Women’s Loyal League (NY) Stanton: “woman is
vitally interested and responsible with men for the final settlement of this
problem of self-government.”
Openly political
– criticized Pres. Lincoln
for not acting boldly enough;
Jan 1, 1863 Lincoln -
Emancipation Proclamation – freed only slaves in states under
Confederate rule – not “border states” like Maryland;
women urged passage of
13th Amendment to Constitution to abolish
slavery;
NWLL 5,000 members, met
weekly. Speaking tours, collected
almost 400,000 names on petition for 13th Amendment.
Anthony called for
League
to demand women’s suffrage as their “birth right of
freedom” - resolution
passed, but scared away many members;
Post Civil-War
society
Southern “black
codes”; race riots in Memphis, New Orleans; Ku Klux Klan;
- 1870
15th amendment: "The right of citizens to vote shall not be denied or
abridged by the US or by any State on account of race, color, or previous
condition of servitude".
National Association of
Colored Women