Dr. Clinton's Lecture on Women and the Civil War

            On Thursday, March 21, I attended the lecture given by Dr. Catherine Clinton on the topic of Women and the Civil War. Even now, women are not a group particularly emphasized for their involvement in the Civil War, so I was curious as to what new information Dr. Clinton could reveal on the matter. In the end, she mainly discussed female roles we had already talked about in class, but she did mention some that were new to me. More specifically, she mentioned women as nurses, disguised soldiers, and concubines or prostitutes. While I did find this new knowledge intriguing, it was not discerned easily from her lecture. Dr. Clinton spoke in a sort of rushed manner and her lecture seemed a bit too cluttered with various historical examples. It was not until halfway through her talk that I was able to gather what her main points were.
            Moving on, though, the roles she mentioned that we had talked about in class were, of course, nurses and disguised soldiers. Nurses were the most prominent group of women in the war, slowly helping to improve sanitation in field and regular hospitals. Clinton here spoke of such notables as Clara Barton (founder of the Red Cross) and the Women's Central Relief Association. Though both of these organizations were Union groups, the Confederacy also had active nurses, albeit less organized than their Union contemporaries. Clinton also talked about women who disguised themselves as male soldiers. There were various motives for these women, including wanting adventure, believing in their side’s cause, and wanting to be with their husbands in military service.
            Clinton also spoke about women who were concubines or prostitutes, a role on which I was not at all informed. These women would follow around the troops’ camps, providing sexual services to the soldiers. Concubines would often stick with certain soldiers or officers, while the prostitutes opened themselves to any paying customer. Perhaps concubines sought a more permanent and secure relationship with their partner, while the prostitutes were women who had usually been forced by poverty to seek out such means of employment. All in all, although Clinton’s lecture was difficult to follow, I am still glad I attended it and learned about this not oft discussed group of women who participated in the Civil War.