Impact of the Civil War on the Women's Suffrage Movement

The American Civil War was a significant factor in the development of the women’s suffrage movement. The Civil War transformed many areas of American society, including the lives of women. Women found empowerment in helping others, learned they could support themselves financially, and discovered untapped strengths on the front lines. Many took their new found skills and focused their energies on women’s suffrage. Without their experiences during the Civil War, American women may have had a much longer battle for the right to vote.

Women who pledged to aid soldiers found empowerment. Sewing circles, temperance organizations, and church groups took their capacity to organize and shifted their focus to aiding soldiers. They put on fairs and bazaars, selling goods of all kind, to raise funds. After a time, Northern women who participated in national relief organizations became frustrated with how they were managed by men, so they formed their own groups to organize fundraising events and fairs that they could control.(1) After discovering she would need her husband’s signature to construct a building, with her own funds, for the Chicago Sanitary Fair, Mary Livermoore “registered a vow that when the war was over [she] would take up a new work – the work of making law and justice synonymous for women.”(2)

Women left behind at home learned they could be economically self-sufficient. Women on both sides were often left to manage the family farm and to do the work of men. A few northern women found success and greater wealth for their families than when their men had managed the farm.(3) Women also took on extra work to make ends meet; often sewing commercially at home, selling homemade products, taking in borders, or working in mills. Some Southern women took advantage of the high prices of goods and reworked old collars, sleeves, and other finery for resale.4 Northern women at home grew to expect the government to compensate them for the loss of their husband’s income or, worse, their husband’s lives. In 1862, Congress heard their voices and created “a new pension law that would provide a starting point for future pension legislation down through the end of the century.”(5)

Women who worked on the front lines discovered strength in new situations. Many served the U.S. Sanitary Commission alongside the fighting men. In the Commission, they distributed clothes, food, medicine, and bibles. Other women washed soldier’s clothes, cooked their meals, and brought water and ammunition to the men in the fight (6). Women who served as nurses learned they could handle the horrors of war as well as any man. Nurse Clara Barton was helping a wounded soldier when a bullet passed through her sleeve and into her patient. After the war, Clara Barton went on to found the Red Cross, while other nurses opened and attended the very first nursing colleges for women. “Women who had learned to value their own efforts and abilities during the war ‘were not willing to fold their useful hands when the war was over, and let the old order of things reestablish itself.’”(7)

After the Civil War society expected women to return to their antebellum roles, but womankind did not forget what the war had taught them about their capabilities. The freedoms and mental attitudes women experienced from 1861 to 1865 gave the women’s suffrage movement the fuel it needed to succeed. Although it would take until 1920 and the Nineteenth Amendment for women to have the vote nationally, the Civil War was a significant step in the development of women’s suffrage. “Full, heavy skirts, restricting corsets, vast crinolines, bustles, hampering tied-back skirts, long trains, hobble skirts…they underline women’s inactivity, which made possible such fantasies of dress. All this disappeared with the Great War and the long-overdue emancipation of women which was part of the new structure of society that emerged from it.”(8)

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(1)Paul A. Cimbala et. al., Daily Lives of Civilians in Wartime Early America: From the Colonial Era to the Civil War, Edited by David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, Daily Life Through History, (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007), 206-207.
(2)Daily Lives of Civilians in Wartime Early America: From the Colonial Era to the Civil War, 223.
(3)Daily Lives of Civilians in Wartime Early America: From the Colonial Era to the Civil War, 195.
(4)Dorothy Denneen and James M. Volo, Daily Life in Civil War America, Daily Life Through History, (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007), 242.
(5)Daily Lives of Civilians in Wartime Early America: From the Colonial Era to the Civil War, 196.
(6)Michael J. Varhola, Everyday Life During the Civil War, Edited by David Borcherding, (Cincinnati, OH: Writer’s Digest Books, 1999), 120.
(7)Daily Lives of Civilians in Wartime Early America: From the Colonial Era to the Civil War, 223.
(8)Alison Garnsheim, Victorian and Edwardian Fashion: A Photographic Survey, (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1981), 22.

Populist Party Platform, July 4, 1892

On the 116^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the Populist Party adopted the Omaha Platform as the basic set of principles for the party.  Members of the Populist Party were frustrated with two political parties that, from their perspective, were so wrapped up in their own political struggles that they had neglected the needs of the people.  The Populist Party believed much of the government, as well as the voting process, to be corrupt.  They believed that there was inadequate currency, primarily due to the demonetization of silver and greed.  They believed in labor unions and approved expansion of government regulations to ensure the end of oppression, poverty, and injustice.  Lastly, they believed their reform movement would continue until “every wrong is remedied and equal rights and equal privileges securely established for all the men and women of this country.” 

 

In the Preamble, the Populist Party laid out all the wrongs they saw in the country, using emotion to grab the attention of the reader.  The Platform clearly showed the character of the Party through their demands revolving around labor, finance, transportation, and land ownership.  The final section of the document, the Expression of Sentiments, offered logical applications for their demands in order to resolve the issues of their Party’s focus.

The greatest impact of the Populist Party and their Platform was the attention brought to the issues.  Over the following 100 years, many of the proposals in the platform were enacted, the majority as part of the New Deal following the Great Depression.

A document like the Populist Party’s Platform could easily be written for the similar issues we face today.  If this was a modern document, I would certainly find it a convincing argument to join their Party’s membership.

Social Darwinism: Did Wealthy Industrialists Practice What They Preached?

During the Golden Age, many wealthy industrialists embraced social Darwinism, and laissez-faire, because it reinforced their right of wealth and position.  Most did not read about or fully understand social Darwinism, but parroted what they heard from others.  Some, like Andrew Carnegie, actually had a backwards understanding of social Darwinism.  In his essay on social Darwinism in 1900, Carnegie described an evolution that progressed from a complex state to a simple state, when in actuality evolution operated in the reverse.  Even though Carnegie seemed to have an incorrect understanding of social Darwinism, he was a big supporter of Herbert Spencer, a prolific author on social Darwinism who originated the phrase “survival of the fittest.” Most social Darwinism industrialists practiced what they preached only when it benefited them.  Few fully acted on it, and when supporters, such as William Graham Sumner, spoke up for social Darwinism and laissez-faire they were ridiculed by so-called social Darwinists that didn’t support the action because it went against their interests.

What is social Darwinism, and why did Golden Age industrialists embrace it?

What do the theories of social Darwinism and laissez-faire have in common?

Speech to a White Audience, Chief Jospeh, 1879

In-mut-too-yah-lat-lat, better known to us as Chief Joseph, was arguing for the freedom of his people.  He was trying to set straight the way that things occurred, in order to convince the white man that the land belonged to his people and they were free.  First he demonstrated that his people were good, law abiding people by explaining the code of laws that they lived by. This was likely an attempt to convince the reader that what he said next was true. Next he illustrated the history of his people to prove they had always been on their land, had never been the aggressor towards the white man, and that over the previous 100 years white men had gone from being friendly to threatening them with force.  Chief Joseph attempted to lay out their history with the white man to show step by step how the situation had developed and prove that his people were in the right. Throughout the speech, he addressed the audience as a friend in the hopes of appealing to their emotions.

Chief Joseph was an eloquent, convincing speaker.  Instead of using violence to defend his position, he used words. It took great courage to stand up to the white man’s determination to own the entire west with just words.  History will never forget the plight of his people because of Chief Joseph.

I have always been saddened and ashamed by how our American ancestors treated the Native Americans.  Chief Joseph’s speech is proof of the greedy betrayal of the white man and their disregard for others that were different.

Why Did So Many Soldiers Die?

Loss of life in the Civil War nearly equaled all loss of life in all wars up to the Vietnam War.  Most would think the primary cause of death for soldiers in the Civil War would have been death by the enemy, but in reality it was death by medicine.

There is no denying the carnage of the Civil War.  Armies had up to 200,000 or more soldiers on the field.  The sheer quantity of soldiers on the field could turn rivers red with blood.  Battle strategy was antiquated, not having changed since Napoleonic times.  Soldiers would advance in rows, shoulder to shoulder, head on with the enemy, with little or no cover to protect them.  Weapons technology had advanced from muskets to rifles.  Rifles shot further, had greater accuracy, and more deadly ammunition. 

The violence of the Civil War was brutal, but the violence of medicine was worse.  Limited by the lack of medical professionals, ambulances, and hospitals and complicated by the size of the armies, wounded soldiers would sometimes lie on the battlefield for days without water or aid. Neither side was prepared for the massive casualties of the war. Even worse was the lack of medical knowledge.  Germ theory had not yet been discovered, so surgeons didn’t wash in between patients and when they did wash it was often in dirty water.  Disease was rampant in the army camps, and treatment for disease was primitive. Prisoners of war suffered the most from disease.  In the end, disease killed almost double the soldiers of the Civil War combat itself.

Which was responsible for more death, combat or medicine?  Why?

How could such great loss of life been prevented in the Civil War?