Wartime Separation of Spouses

Digital History ID 402

Author: David V.M. Smith

Date:1862
Annotation:
The Civil War separated families in unprecedented numbers and
freed women to assume many new roles. With the departure of
many men into the military, women entered many occupations
previously reserved for men only: in factories, shops, and
especially, the expanding civil service, where women took jobs as
clerks, bookkeepers, and secretaries. A number of women also
served as spies (like Rose O'Neal Greenhow (1814-1864), a
Confederate spy in Washington) and even as soldiers (like Albert
Cashier, whose real name was Jennie Hodgers).
But it was as nurses that women achieved particular prominence.
Louisa May Alcott and Clara Barton were among thousands of
women, North and South, who carried supplies to soldiers and
nursed wounded men on the battlefield and in hospitals. Through
organizations like the Christian Commission (formed by the
North's YMCAs) and the U.S. Sanitary Commission (one of whose
founders was Elizabeth Blackwell, the first American woman to
earn a medical degree), women agents distributed medical
supplies, organized hospitals, passed out Bibles and religious
tracts, and offered comfort to wounded or dying soldiers.
The following soldier's letter, written by a private in the 12th New
Jersey Volunteers, suggests some of the strains caused by the
wartime separation of spouses.
Document:
...We have not been paid anything since I was at home and I
don't know when we will get paid but as soon as I get it I will
send it to you. And if you will try to do as near Right as I think I
am trying to do there will be no dispute between us and may God
of heaven help us to say & do as near Right as we possibly can
and find fault with one another with we know there is no cause
when then the less we do of it the better. We have everything a
going on here that was ever thought...but I cannot see any
pleasure in playing cards and myself therefore I have not had a
game of any kind for I made a promise to myself...that I would

not do anything of the kind while was I was in the Army and I
intend to live up to it. We have had and have now several men
and I suppose they would like to be called men one of them has
to carry his knap sack filled with stones for one week 2 hours in
each day, one has to walk two hours each day with a flour barrel;
one head of the barrel is out and the other head has a hole in it
just big enough to let the man's head through; one is marched
through the camp with a board on his back & 1 on his breast-with the word theif [sic] on each by 12 solders and a band
playing the Rogues march. There is a number of other but I will
not mention any more.
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