Timeline: Women in the Civil War By: Ida Allen-Auerbach, Juliette Williamson, June Meredith, and Maia Supple
April 12, 1861: The war starts, women receive an abundance of their already massive amount of responsibilities as the men have all left to participate in the war. Women take on jobs previously occupied by men, such as working on the farm and becoming the heads of the house.
1861: Elizabeth Blackwell created the Women's Central Association of Relief which trained women to become doctors. She was the first woman to graduate from medical school in the United states.
June of 1861: Dorothea Lynde Dix is appointed Superintendent of Female Nurses of the Union Army, which can be called a step forward in women s rights, as this job as a Head or Superintendent of something is a very new and honorable position for women in the mid-1800 s.
1861: Emeline Pigott started smuggling provisions, medical supplies and ammunition under her hoop skirt across enemy lines for the confederate army. She would entertain men at house parties, using her womanly charms to gain information to give to the army. She would get messages to them by hiding them in secret hiding spaces or hand-delivering the information. The union army soon found out and she was arrested. 1861: Rose O Neal Greenhow was the Confederacy s most celebrated female spy at the start of the Civil War. Becoming a wildly popular hostess, Mrs. Greenhow went up easily in social circles. She would charm men for secrets and information about the opposing side.
1861: Mary Todd Lincoln, the First Lady, accompanied Lincoln on military visits to the field. Mary offered intelligence she had learned as well as her own advice to the President on military personnel, recommended minor military appointments to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, toured Union Army camps and reviewed troops with her husband.
August of 1862: Sarah Rosetta Wakeman was one of hundreds of women who disguised themselves as men to fight in the Civil War. Unlike most of the women however, the letters that Wakeman wrote home were preserved by her family and later published. They give a unique picture of what it was like to undertake and maintain such a masquerade.
1862: Mary Scaberry was one of the first women to enlist as a man in the civil war. Scaberry enlisted as a soldier. During her time she suffered a serious fever and was admitted to a hospital. The doctors soon found that she was female and she was discharged from the service despite her great help on the battlefield.
1863: Harriet Tubman, a slave, led Colonel James Montgomery and his soldiers to raid rice plantations along the Combahee River, South Carolina, freeing many of the slaves working on the plantations.
1864: Clara Barton earned the nickname, Angel of the Battlefield by refusing to wait for an injured soldier to be brought to the rear of the battlefield to treat him and instead dodging bullets to tend to the injured men. Her bravery and courage earned her a job as superintendent of nurses in the Army of the James in June 1864, despite her criticism of the military s treatment of the wounded.
January 19, 1864: One woman's true identity was discovered when she gave birth after fighting in the Battle of Stone s River while she was five months pregnant. She managed to do this without anyone figuring out her true identity. December 31, 1862: An astonishing amount of women, disguised as men, fought equally alongside male soldiers in the monumental Battle of Stone s River.
1873: The earliest schools built to train female nurses were established.
July of 1863: At a Union burial in Pennsylvania, along with all of the the bodies covering the ground, they found a deceased woman wearing the uniform of a Confederate private.
May 12-13, 1865: The last battle of the war was Battle of Palmito Ranch, and Women somewhat returned to their daily life, however this time with honorable experience in their pockets.
1917: Mary Walker receives the Medal of Honor for her service in the Civil War.She is the only woman ever to receive the medal of honor in the history of time.