Women and Reform in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

The Civil War contributed to the redefinition of women’s political roles and relations with the state. Women gained in moral authority as they raised funds for the relief of the Confederate and Union armies, sewed clothes, and nursed the wounded. After the war, higher levels of widowhood, economic distress, and an awareness of their own contributions to society meant women could not, and in many cases, did not wish to return to their pre-war roles. Instead they redefined their civic responsibilities building upon their wartime experiences, in order to overcome what they perceived as political obstacles to their equal incorporation into public life. In the aftermath of the war it became clear that the quest for suffrage would not flourish if allied to other causes but had to stand or fall on its own merits. The crusade waxed and waned as its rationale shifted from a state by state quest for equality between the sexes to an expedient means to accomplish other items on the maternal-political agenda, finally succeeding as a federal amendment in 1920.