page_title: Sex in the American Civil War
section_title: Female soldiers
hierarchical_section_title: Sex in the American Civil War / Female soldiers
caption_attribution_description: English: Title: Frances Hook, also known as Private Frank Miller, Frank Henderson, and Frank Fuller of Co. G, 90th Illinois Infantry Regiment, 33rd Illinois Infantry Regiment, and 11th Illinois Infantry Regiment in uniform] / T.J. Merritt's National Portrait Gallery, 42 and 44 Union Street, Nashville, Tenn Abstract/medium: 1 photograph&#160;: albumen print on card mount&#160;; mount 11 x 6 cm (carte de visite format)
context_page_description: During the American Civil War, sexual behavior and gender roles and attitudes were affected by the conflict, especially by the absence of menfolk at home and the emergence of new roles for women such as nursing. The advent of photography and easier media distribution, for example, allowed for greater access to sexual material for the common soldier.
context_section_description: The number of female soldiers in the war is estimated at between 400 and 750, although an accurate count is impossible because the women had to disguise themselves as men. A Union officer was once quoted regarding how a Union sergeant was "in violation of all military law" by giving birth to child, and this was not the only case where the true sex of a soldier was discovered due to childbirth. A captured Confederate officer whose true sex was previously unknown by the guards gave birth in a Union prison camp.
  The Civil War was generally a time of challenges to traditional gender norms, as women mobilized themselves to participate in the war effort and left the home in droves to serve as charity workers, nurses, clerks, farm laborers, and political activists. Across the Confederacy, upper-class women assembled all-female home guard militias, drilling firearms usage and training to protect their plantations, properties, and neighborhoods from Union invasion. Military training became mandatory at some private girls' academies. One female militia in LaGrange, Georgia--a uniquely militarily vulnerable city, poised halfway between the industrial powerhouse of Atlanta and the original Confederate capital at Montgomery, Alabama--engaged in diplomatic negotiations with the invading Union army in April 1865, using the threat of violence to obtain a promise that their city would not be ransacked. As concerted a challenge to gender norms as these all-female militias would seem to pose, however, the participants were careful to otherwise keep well within gender norms, and to avoid the impression of usurping male protective roles.
  The most dramatic and extreme challenge to gender roles, then, came with those women who participated in the Civil War as fully enlisted combatants. Though not particularly well known today, it is estimated that there are over 1000 women who enlisted in both the Union and Confederate armies under assumed male identities. The female soldiers were not operating within a vacuum, responding blindly to the stimulus of war. Unlike the members of the all-female militias, the female enlisted soldiers were drawn disproportionately from working- and lower-middle-class backgrounds—and therefore represented a radically different cultural milieu. Mid-nineteenth-century working-class culture, for example, was generally familiar—if not comfortable—with female cross-dressing, with the phenomenon being prominently featured in popular theatrical and literary pieces with mass audiences.
  Women had different motivations for joining the army, just as did their male counterparts. A common reason was to escape pre-arranged marriages. Sarah Edmonds, for example, left her home in maritime Canada and fled to the United States to avoid marriage—but took the ultimate protective step of dressing as a man and enlisting in the Union Army to avoid detection. Loreta Janeta Velazquez, on the other hand, was driven to enlist by more personal motivations; inspired by the example of Joan of Arc and other historical women warriors, she was idealistic about feminine potential on the battlefield, insisting that, "when women have rushed to the battlefield, they have invariably distinguished themselves." Sarah Rosetta Wakeman had been living as a man long before the outbreak of the war, hoping to find better-paying work on the riverboats of New York rather than as a female domestic servant. She was, therefore, compelled to enlist by an economic imperative; the prospect of steady pay as an enlisted soldier in the Union Army appeared to be preferable to the instability of day labor. Whatever the original motivations of the individual female soldiers, however, they ultimately took part in the war on similar terms as their male brothers-in-arms.
  The existence of illicit female soldiers was an open secret in both the wartime Union and Confederacy, with stories commonly shared in both soldiers' letters and newspaper articles. Awareness trickled out into the general public--and civilians were fascinated by these women warriors. This curiosity is reflected i
caption: Frances Hook, also known as Private Frank Miller, Frank Henderson, and Frank Fuller, was discovered to be a woman when she was wounded at the Battle of Fredericktown, Missouri. Afterwards, she enlisted in another regiment and was captured at Florence, Alabama, and imprisoned in Atlanta where again she was discovered to be a woman.
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