Keith Porter: I am looking to find general information about what women were like during the civil war era. I am writing research paper, so any website needs to be a reliable source of information. Does anyone know of any site that might be of help to me?|||I don't know of any websites, but I have a very good book called 'America's Women' by Gail Collins which has a very interesting chapter about women in the civil war. In both the north and the south, a great many became nurses, about 3,000 professional nurses held paid positions, and many more joined as volunteers."The war is certainly ours as well as men's" said Kate Cummings of Mobile, Alabama, who became the matron of a large Confderate hospital. In the early years of the civil war conditions were quite chaotic and women often just made their own way to the front and helped out. Later things were better organised. Dorothea Dix, who was Superintendant of Nurses for the Union Army, set a minimum age of thirty for her nurses, and required that they be plain women, but had to relax her rules because there were so many nurses needed. Women organised relief efforts, and in the north their efforts became a national organisation, the United States Sanitary commission, which eprformed a critical role in providing food and medical services of trhe soldiers. Although men occupied the top jobs in the comission, women had a great many managerial roles. "The necessary supplies were almost universally collected, assorted, and dispatched, and re-collected, re-assorted, and re-despathed, by women, representing with great impartiality every grade of society in the Republic" said Alfred Bloor of the Sanitary Commission. The women had taken over, he said, after the men were discouraged when it became clear that the war was not going to be short-lived after all. In the south, many women were left to run farms and plantations while the men were away at war. The Confederate Amry began to draft soldiers in the spring of 1862, during planting time, and the sight of women behind plows became common. As the war dragged on, the twons became virtually all-female worlds, stripped of able-bodied men. Southern women began to fill government jobs, particularly in the TReasury Department, where each Confederate banknote ahd to be signed individually. The job required good handwriting and good political connections. Most of the women came from elite families. Some of them regarded it a s agreat adventure. "I am rarely ill now even with the headache" reporteed twenty-year old Adelaide Stuart "being forced to take a job was the best thing that could have taken place for me" Women from less influential backgrounds got jobs as well. Thousands took in piecework for the Confderate Clothing Bureau, sewing shirts for $1 apiece and coats for $4. Others packed cartridges at the arsenal for $1 a day. It was dangerous work - in 1863, fifty of the ordnance workers were killed in an explosion in Richmond. An estimated 400 women disguised themselves as men and enlisted as soldiers. Some women on both sides were spies. The most famous southern spy was Belle Boyd, who took advantage of Union soliders gallantry towards a beautiful young girl to serve as a courier for the Confederate Intelligence service, and delivered information on troop size and placement she had picked up from her admirers. Harriet Tubman, the former slave and conductor of the Underground Railway, served as a spy and scout for the Union Army. I've only included a few snippets from the book, I recommned you reading the whoel chapter if you can get a copy (I expect your library can get you one) it is a mos tinteresting book.