Am I a Soldier of the Cross?

Abstract

The vast majority of Northern women supported the Union cause. Some had been on the forefront of the abolitionist movement, but for most the Civil War’s goal was a restoration of the Union. Rich and poor Northern white women turned their homes into miniature factories or worked in actual factories to ensure soldiers’ material, civic, and spiritual needs were met. Yet like in the South, many Northern white women found the demands placed upon them untenable and urged their men to come home. There were class-based divisions over how best to orgainze aid for soldiers, including over the work done by the U.S Sanitary Commission (USSC). Many elite, Northern, white women sought to separate themselves from or refused to work with working-class, poor, and Black Northern women on support efforts. Wealthy white women became the aristocracy of women’s wartime abolition movement and very few Americans then or since have questioned their ascent or how their wealth (derived from the North’s connections to slavery) enabled their politics.