Social revolution or causality of war? Assessing the impact of the Civil War on the lives of 19th century women

The Civil War had a profound impact on the lives of nineteenth-century women. While the men determined the final outcome of the battlefields, the women's focus shifted away from the private "cult of domesticity" to the public sphere of influence as they had to contend with wartime changes. Using letter and diaries written during the war and through recent historical works, a multi-perspective approach was taken to assess the impact of war on the lives of Northern women, Civil War women soldiers, and Southern women and what changes may have resulted. There is no denying that the social landscape forever changed for these women when the Civil War occurred, but more importantly, the post-war era saw the rise of a new woman (along with her new self-identity) who understood that her sphere of influence was not predefined by the dictates of men or limitations of a patriarchal society.