Suddenly women had to perform men's tasks and jobs, such as overseeing the planting and disciplining and controlling the slaves, with little previous training. Men, however, thought it was okay for women to assume that everything would return to the way it was before the war when the war ended. But many women who had supported the patriarchal society, felt betrayed somewhat by the men who had abandoned them and left them to do work that they had never done before..
During the war, some women turned to a job to help alleviate their family's poverty or to escape dependence on relatives. Working for the Confederate government was a job that opened to females during the Civil War. The number of female clerks, secretaries, copyists, and currency counters rapidly increased during the war. Most of these jobs were in the Treasury and War Departments, and the Post Office also employed female postmistresses. Some women were given jobs because they were form influential families, and others because they were war widows. They were all given positions because government officials knew they could pay women less.
Female saboteurs and informants were crucial to the Confederate victories in the early part of the war. Southern belles were not expected to blow up buildings, and the Confederates used this to their advantage. Kate Beattie, a famous Confederate spy and smuggler, burned Union boats and warehouses and was never caught. Emmeline Piggot, a female smuggler, escaped imprisonment after running a blockade in North Carolina. As for female spies and informants, there was a moral conflict involved in their roles. They had to decide between helping the Confederacy and being a lady.
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.
