Category Archives: Revolutionary War

A Quick Introduction to Women Warriors

This week, I’m going to talk a bit about women’s war efforts prior to World War II. Consider this a bit of an introduction – I have way more material in ye ol’ research files about women in the Civil War and in World War I. So, let’s get started!

In its History of Wartime Nurses, Duquesne (Dew-Kane) University’s School of Nursing points out that women have nursed wounded warriors all the way back to the Revolutionary War. Other sources tell of women protesting tea, melting pewter dishes to mold bullets, and acting as couriers. Some women went to war with their husbands. And, as Susan Casey writes in her author’s note to Women Heroes of the American Revolution, “In many cases, women didn’t have to rush to war. The war surrounded them, engulfed their lives.”

There’s a reason why little girls learn the legend of Molly Pitcher and the story of a female Paul Revere. They may be myths, exaggerations (or not), but they are stories that inspire.

Then we come to the Civil War. In her book Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy, popular historian Karen Abbott writes: 

There was work for everyone to do, even the women— especially the women. They had to adjust quickly to the sudden absence of fathers and husbands and sons, to the idea that things would never be as they had been. They had no vote, no straightforward access to political discourse, no influence in how the battles were waged. Instead they took control of homes, businesses, plantations. They managed their slaves in the fields, sometimes backing up orders with violence. They formed aid societies, gathering to darn socks and underwear for the soldiers. To raise money for supplies they hosted raffles and bazaars, despite widespread resistance from the very men they aimed to help (protested one general, “It merely looks unbecoming for a lady to stand behind a table to sell things”). They even served as informal recruiting officers, urging men to enlist and humiliating those who demurred, sending a skirt and crinoline with a note attached: “Wear these, or volunteer.”

Karen Abbott (2014)

Abbott tells the stories of four women who served both the union and the confederacy: three as spies, and one as a union private. Take for example, Rose O’Neal Greenhow, who ran a confederate spy ring in Washington, DC, who had been recruited into this position by confederate President Jefferson Davis, through his emissary Captain Thomas Jordan. Later, Union Colonel Erasmus D. Keyes called her “one of the most persuasive women that was ever known in Washington”— persuasive enough to wheedle classified information from him in between their alleged trysts. Or how about Emma Edmondson, who posed as Union private Frank Thompson, one of the 400 estimated women who served as men during this war between the States. Edmondson served at great risk to herself, knowing that if she was found out that she could be arrested for prostitution.

And then there was Mary Edwards Walker who became the first female Army surgeon during the Civil War. Walker often crossed battle lines and in April 1864 was arrested by Confederate troops as a spy – after helping a Confederate doctor with a surgery. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Honor by President Andrew Johnson, but was stripped of the medal in 1917 because she “did not meet the requirements to qualify for the award” (i.e., she was a woman). She refused to return the medal and wore it for the rest of her life. The honor was later restored in 1977.

Women continued their contributions during World War I, working as homefront volunteers, overseas nurses, factory laborers, and support personnel. They formed what historian Lynn Dumenil labeled “the second line of defense.”

In an article for Time Magazine, author Pamela Toler noted that “increasing manpower demands … made it easier for women to make official contributions [during World War I] … Women signed up as ambulance drivers, telephone operators, munitions workers, members of various service auxiliaries, and even as soldiers in Bolshevik Russia’s all-female units.” In the United States, women served openly as Navy “Yeomanettes” thanks to a loophole in the law that did not state that only men could enlist in the Navy. By the end of World War I, 11,000 American women had become yeomen (F). Originally, these women were recruited to take over clerical duties, but by the end of the war, the female yeomen were also working as “radio and telegraph operators, supervisors for naval shipments, commissary stewards, draftsmen, pharmacists, torpedo assemblers, and camouflage designers.”

Next Time: The Hello Girls

Sources

Abbott, K. (2014). Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War [Kindle Android version]. Harper. 

Casey, Susan. (2015). Women Heroes of the American Revolution: 20 Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Defiance, and Rescue. (Women of Action Series). Chicago Review Press. [YA Nonfiction]

Dumenil, L. (2017). The Second Line of Defense: American Women in World War I. University of North Carolina Press. 

“The History of Wartime Nurses.” (nd). Duquesne University School of Nursing. https://onlinenursing.duq.edu/history-wartime-nurses/ [Last accessed July 18, 2021]

Toler, P.D. (2019, February 26). “Not Every Woman Who Served with the U.S. Military During World War I Got the Same Treatment. Here’s Why.” Time Magazine. Last accessed October 9, 2021. https://time.com/5537784/wwi-us-military-women/

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