Enslaved Women

Abstract

Black women fought for their freedom and the Union by supporting Black men in the Union Army, laboring for the Federal Government and Union Army, and transforming plantations into sites of resistance. The Civil War slowly enlarged the space for the slaves’ war and transformed the terms of the bargains they had been called to make. Enslaved women’s actions transformed the meaning of “women in the Civil War” from one which primarily referred to white women to one that included Black women as well. Their actions also transformed the gender and racial dynamics of the war.