Civil War Women

The Civil War brought a lot of destruction and segregation throughout the near divided United States, but it also brought a feminist movement. Women were filling the jobs that men had left behind to go to war, and they were enjoying their new sense of purpose and independence. When their freedom was taken away with the men returning home, women became restless and started to fight for a movement towards equality in anything from politics to job security. Dozens of women contributed first hand to these revolutions is women perception, but three notable leaders were Margaret Sanger, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Frances Perkins. These women were driving factors for the feminist movement to come after the Civil War; all in their own unique

advancements of rights for women. Margaret Sanger was a primary focus for birth control and her belief in women's rights to contraceptives and sexual knowledge, helping to create the first form of oral birth control. Mary McLeod Bethune acted for women's rights as well as the rights of African American of her time. She founded the Bethune-Cookman College to help the rise of education for African Americans and was later president of the National Council of Negro Women. Frances Perkins, however, did one of the most notable deeds to her time. Perkins was the woman behind Franklin Roosevelt's New deal as well held office as Secretary of Labor for 12 years, the longest the position has even been held. These three women were some in the head front for the driving force that was the feminist movement after the Civil War.
In short, the Civil War lead for a new demand from women who had not been seen outside of the rural farming lands.

Of that time, the only women that honestly worked were the women on the farms and in the countryside of America. Most women were to be at home with the duty of children or housekeeping, with little to no political rights or respects. The few women that were given any form of power were those of high-class society, such as high rollers of New England or southern belles of the South. During the Civil War, many of the men of working-class families were being drafted out to fight, except those that were willing to pay the fee to be replaced by another man. Leaving hundreds to thousands of different job types unfulfilled, and leaving many woman home alone, it led to a demand for women to go to work to replace the men who had left. This gave women a sense of independence that for most had never been felt before. After years of oppression, women started to have an impact in the American way of

life.
For over four years, women were filling men's shoes in the work force. The Civil War, unknowingly related to women's rights, was mainly centralized around the segregation between the Northern Union and the Southern Confederacy. It was, in a personal opinion, a war purely on skin color and pride. "The Civil War started because of uncompromising differences between the free and slave states over the power of the national government to prohibit slavery in the territories that had not yet become states" (Mcpherson 2014). Abraham Lincoln and his radical views were elected in 1860 for presidency, which brought on aggravation from the South. Their threats of attempting secession became a quick reality by 1861 when men lined up for battle along the line against Virginia to Missouri. President Lincoln further antagonized the Southern Confederacy by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, very quickly changing the South's original defense of starting the war not on race, but on rights. The proclamation put the entirety of the South into the view from all aspects of media that this was a race war, causing the Confederacy to lose international support and, frankly, integrity. By spring of 1865 was the Confederacy's surrender to the Union, ending the Civil War and soon supposed the demand for women in the work force.
The increase of industrialization and the new flow of immigrants into the United states only caused the workforce to grow in high numbers. With this, rise came a higher demand for workers, and often the workers desired were labeled as unskilled. This term loosely referred to immigrants, colored folk, and women. The highest in demand was the female work force. They worked harder and were paid less, which was good business for growing factories and industries. With this demand from industries, however, came a demand from women. Many women were starting to live a more independent and individual lifestyle throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s, and they wanted equality and basic rights just as men had. Women wanted to vote and wanted to go to school. This led some women to begin their dabble in political affairs. It would be a few decades before women would receive basic rights, but some of the notable movements for women were not just those of the suffrage movement. One large movement in the female community, that began to follow around the 191's, was women's rights to birth control.
In 1910, a woman named Margaret Sanger became one of the leading ladies in the strive for women's contraceptives. A fairly taboo topic of its time, Sanger first coined the term "birth control" in 1914 (American 2001). Although a progressive woman, she was still a woman of her time. She often fueled her arguments of women's contraceptives and birth control with the ideology of eugenics. Eugenics is the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics (Webster). This idea that was first founded by Francis Galton, or at least, he is highly noted for it, was often a topic for Sanger to discuss and use as evidence for the need of female birth control. In her piece The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda she (Sanger 1921) is quoted to say, "the example of the inferior classes, the fertility of the feeble-minded, the mentally defective, the poverty-stricken classes, should not be held up for emulation to the mentally and physically fit; although fewer fertile parents of the educated and well-to-do classes. On the contrary, the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.". Although lengthy, she reaches the conclusion that eugenics is the answer to reducing over breeding and to guarantee that those we breed are the best possible, and that birth control should be used to stop over breeding by those unfit. "Margaret Sanger spoke of sterilizing those she designated as "unfit," a plan she said would be the "salvation of American civilization” (Citizen 1992) She was referring to minorities, immigrants, poor, ill, disabled, black, and many more. Sanger also "wholeheartedly supported" the use of violence to achieve political, economic, and social goals (Liveaction). Despite these views, that would today be seen in a very negative light, she continued to pave a movement for women and their right to contraceptives. She was often on the run with the law of her time, including being arrested for opening the first birth control clinic in the country in 1916. She founded an organization known as the American Birth Control League (ABCL), which progressed to later be known today as Planned Parenthood. The organization today is still under fire for Sanger's radical views from a century back, even though today Planned Parenthood attempts to hold no affiliation with any radical or extremist groups, especially those surrounding the subject of racism.
A leading lady in not only women's rights, but also the rights of African Americans, was Dr.

Mary McLeod Bethune. This woman was an educator, civil rights activist, and political figure throughout her life. Founding over five organizations, her most notable was the National Council of Negro Women, which she founded as an "organization of organizations" that would represent the national and international concerns of black women (NCNW). First, however, she founded her own school named Daytona Educational and Industrial Training School, which was for Negro Girls in Daytona Beach, Florida. After 25 years, the school partnered with an all boy's school by the name of Cookman Institute, and by 1943 it was fully accredited as Bethune-Cookman University. She founded the National Council of Negro Women, which still stands today, in 1935 and served as president until

1949.
Aside from these achievements, between 1936 and 1944 Bethune was director of Negro Affairs in the National Youth Administration (NYA) and chair of an informal Black Cabinet, a group of federally appointed black officials who met regularly to plan strategy and set black priorities for social change (ERPPC). She also served as a special assistant to the secretary of war and assistant director of the Women's Army Corps during World War II. While working with these officials, she organized the first women's officer candidate schools and lobbied federal officials, including Franklin Roosevelt, on behalf of African-American women who wanted to join the military and eventually became an advisor on minority affairs in the Roosevelt Administration. With these interactions with Roosevelt, she helped move not only the rights for women, but the rights for African Americans as well. " While she gave counsel to presidents and made connections with America's elite, Mary McLeod Bethune was readily accessible to average men and women and the college students that she mothered and mentored." (Cookman).
In the title of Roosevelt, a revolutionary woman to be mentioned would be Frances Perkins, the woman behind Franklin D Roosevelt's New Deal. Perkins was appointed as Secretary of Labor in 1933 and held her place in office for 12 years. Not only was she the longest in office, but she was the first woman to serve in a Presidential cabinet position in all of America's political history. When Roosevelt appointed her into the position, he immediately looked to her for guidance and help for developing the New Deal policy. As a key member to the department of labor, Perkins "worked long days to battle unemployment, and garner support for the New Deal and other programs, and in 1933 alone, she gave more than a hundred speeches" (Breitman 2009). Arguably, the most notable contribution the Frances Perkins made to Franklin d Roosevelt's New Deal policy was the actions of Social Security. According to the Collections at the Frances Perkins Center (2016), in 1934, Roosevelt appointed Frances Perkins to head a Committee on Economic Security, where she forged the blueprint of legislation, which was finalized as the Social Security Act. Her work on the Social Security Act of 1935 not only helped to relieve the Great Depression, but also her position in the cabinet showed that women were not to be under estimated, and helped to pave the way for a continuing feminist revolution for equality. “Being a woman has only bothered me in climbing trees.”-Frances Perkins
Although Perkins did many amazing things for the feminist movement, such as being appointed head of the New York Consumer's League as a lobbyist in 1910, her influence on the New Deal was one of her most notable achievements. After many years of service as Secretary of Labor, in 1945 Perkins was asked by then President Truman to serve on the U.S. Civil Service Commission, which she resumed at until 1952 (Social Security 2016).
These women, as well as many others, helped to lead our country to the near equality we have today. The 19th amendment, granting women the right to vote that they previously did not have, was ratified during these women's time in 1919. They had the opportunity to see the work that they had begun fall into place as an official establishment of beginning equality. Women are now found in almost all areas of the American Political system, all except the official residency. America has had yet to appoint a female president, and whether this is of prejudice or continued inequality standards, it will be hard to know until there is actually a good female candidate presented. As we reach our 45th president, and the elections run high, it is hard to ignore that there is only one female candidate and there has never been more than one female candidate for presidency at one time in almost any election ever in American political history. Frances Perkins, Margaret Sanger, and Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, as well as many more leading women in political and national history, helped pave the way for the female power to rise to its near equality with me; and hopefully there will one day be a female president to serve them justice and meet the ultimate political end goal that many women have fought for over the many decades.