In the Antebellum South, society was based on two main ideas: white superiority and patriarchy. Men were the masters, in charge of the family, the slaves, and the plantation, but along with their authority came duty to protect all that was theirs. And the majority of Southern women agreed with and went along with these ideals. Aristocratic women’s purity and beauty was prized. They were considered dainty and fragile, delicate creatures to be shielded from the harsher realities of life. In the rural society of the South, most women stayed at home with their families, and had a small circle of friends and neighbors with whom they socialized.

But when the Civil War broke out, suddenly plantation mistresses and their children were left alone and unprotected, with plantations they now had to run by themselves. They also took on tasks such as nursing and spying that thrust them into a world of suffering they had never known. But vast numbers of women rose to the occasion, and did whatever they could to support the Confederacy. They took on new roles that had formerly been part of the public, masculine domain, such as overseeing plantation and slaves

The traditional Southern female virtues of charity, tenderness, and mercy were most exemplified in the wartime profession of nursing. In the beginning of the war, women had opened their houses to wounded and traveling soldiers. Some considered the shift from plantation mistress to hospital matron a logical progression in the circumstances, as one of the main duties of plantation mistress had always been to nurse the sick on the plantation and sometimes even in the neighborhood. The hospital life was not easy. Many women worked long, 12-hour shifts and had a grueling schedule that they sometimes maintained for weeks on end. As one of the matron, Phoebe Yates Pember, recalls, “From bed to bed till long past midnight the work continued,” a pace which she kept up for many months. Nurses had many duties to carry out, including providing their patients with food drinks, cleaning their faces and bodies, trying to clean or mend their uniforms, listening to their stories, reading and writing letter for them and sometimes even arranging for family members to come visit.

Although many women tried to ignore and disbelieve what was happening in the war, by the end it became too hard. Many were afraid to look towards the future, because thoughts of what it might hold proved too bleak for them too imagine. As one woman, Cornelia McDonald, wrote, “I felt as if the end of all things had come, at least for the Southern people.” The war had lasted so much longer than originally expected, but after the war was over, traditional gender roles were quickly reestablished, and women once became the symbols of purity, morality, and grace.

Some topics in this essay:
Civil War, North Carolina, Yates Pember, Cornelia McDonald, Antebellum South, Post Office, Phoebe Pember, Kate Beattie, Emmeline Piggot, war women, civil war, roles quickly, southern women, plantation mistresses, plantation mistress,