Women

The chapter examines the historical scholarship on the the situation and the experiences of women and children during the American Civil War  (1861-65) and provides an excellent overview of the developments in the North and South. It discusses both women's involvement in the conflict at the so-called homefront and their war support as camp followers, nurses and in small numbers also as crossdressed soldiers and spies. Social, women, and gender historians–working alongside historians of slavery and irregular warfare–have mounted a successful challenge to the historiography of the American Civil War. Recent work places women at the center of the battle; gives needed attention to the experiences of contrabands, refugees, and other displaced people; and places the Civil War on a continuum with the American Revolution and modern wars in which displacement has been both a key strategy and a tragic outcome of war.