Women
Some women were soldiers, but dressed as men. A Union officer was once quoted regarding how a Union sergeant was "in violation of all military law" by giving birth to child, and this was not the only case where the true sex of a soldier was discovered due to childbirth. A captured Confederate officer whose true gender was previously unknown by the guards gave birth in an Union prison camp.
Some soldiers engaged in acts of rape. The Confederate records were destroyed, but a perusal of only five percent of Federal records reveal that over thirty court martial trials were held due to instances of rape; hanging or firing squad being the usual punishment if convicted. Many rape victims were black. Sometimes, offering a white woman of good standing money for sex was considered almost tantamount to rape; in the case of an Illinois private at Camp Dennison, for example, the perpetrator spent a month at the guardhouse for offering a mother a dollar and her daughter three dollars for sex. Federal troops who committed rape while invading the southern states mostly took advantage of black rather than white women, and black soldiers were usually punished more severely for the crime than their white counterparts.
Read more about this topic: Sex In The American Civil War
Famous quotes containing the word women:
“The women of my mother’s generation had, in the main, only one decision to make about their lives: who they would marry. From that, so much else followed: where they would live, in what sort of conditions, whether they would be happy or sad or, so often, a bit of both. There were roles and there were rules.”
—Anna Quindlen (20th century)
“Work is a responsibility most adults assume, a burden at times, a complication, but also a challenge that, like children, requires enormous energy and that holds the potential for qualitative, as well as quantitative, rewards. Isn’t this the only constructive perspective for women who have no choice but to work? And isn’t it a more healthy attitude for women writhing with guilt because they choose to compound the challenges of motherhood with work they enjoy?”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“Tailor’s work—the finishing of men’s outside garments—was the “trade” learned most frequently by women in [the 1820s and 1830s], and one or more of my older sisters worked at it; I think it must have been at home, for I somehow or somewhere got the idea, while I was a small child, that the chief end of woman was to make clothing for mankind.”
—Lucy Larcom (1824–1893)