I'm pleased to welcome Kinley Bryan as my guest today. She shares insight into the roles of women during the American Civil War, a subject I find interesting because James A Hamilton's daughters participated in some of the work described. James was in his seventies at the time, but he still served as an advisor to President Lincoln and Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase. The Hamilton women had long been involved in charitable work, so they naturally answered the call for help when war broke out between the states. Before I get carried away talking about the Hamiltons, I will turn it over to Kinley!

~ Samantha

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Women in the Civil War

Guest Post by Kinley Bryan

As both a reader and writer of historical fiction, I’m always interested in women’s experiences of historical events. My latest novel, The Lost Women of Mill Street, offers a look at the American Civil War from the perspective of southern female mill workers. It’s one perspective of many, for women took on myriad new roles during the war. In the North, women of all races and social classes contributed to the Union war effort by organizing sanitary fairs and working as nurses. They also served as spies and—though forbidden—combatants. And some southern Unionist women courageously helped Union soldiers in times of danger.

Sanitary Fairs

Soon after the start of the war, women began organizing soldiers’ aid societies. In June 1861 the United States Sanitary Commission was formed under the authority of the government, although it was privately funded. Women and girls throughout the North knitted socks, sewed shirts, and collected money to support the USSC. Women also organized sanitary fairs in cities throughout the North to raise money for the sanitary commission. These fairs featured art, parades, dances, museums, merchandise sales, and auctions, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Nursing

Before the war, few female nurses publicly practiced medicine. In the first couple months of fighting, both the Union and Confederate armies preferred having men serve as nurses, believing women did not belong in hospitals. However, the armies were soon overwhelmed with wounded soldiers and those in charge reconsidered their views. 

In June 1861, Dorothea Dix was appointed Superintendent of Nurses for the Union Army and led the recruitment of women to serve in the nursing corps. According to the Army Heritage Foundation, roughly 3,300 women served as nurses for the Union Army during the war, overcoming their male colleagues’ objections “through appeals to national pride, patriotic duty, and through hard work and dedicated service to the sick and wounded soldiers that filled the nation’s hospitals.”

Southern Unionists

The South was not unified in its view on secession. In Women of the War by Frank Moore, published in 1866, the author recounts the experiences of a number of women from seceded states who courageously helped the Union Army. In one instance, two Tennessee women in the dark of night waved lanterns at an approaching Union Army train; after the train slowed to a stop, the women warned them that Confederate guerillas had destroyed the railroad bridge up ahead.

Moore also describes how, in 1862, a Kentucky woman whose husband fought for the Union was home alone when eleven Confederate soldiers raided her property. As they relaxed by the fireplace, she stole their muskets, shot and killed one who tried to get them back, and the next morning marched the rest at gunpoint to a nearby Union camp.

Spies and Combatants

Though women were barred from military service, there were some who, disguising themselves as men, served in the Union Army. Others served as spies. Harriet Tubman, the formerly enslaved woman known for leading hundreds of people to freedom on the Underground Railroad, was also a Union spy. Having volunteered for the Union as a cook and nurse, she was recruited by Union officers to establish a network of spies behind enemy lines. Disguised as a field hand, Tubman led scouting and spying missions and reported valuable intelligence to Union officers. At the same time, she continued to help enslaved people flee to freedom.

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The Lost Women of Mill Street

1864: As Sherman’s army marches toward Atlanta, a cotton mill commandeered by the Confederacy lies in its path. Inside the mill, Clara Douglas weaves cloth and watches over her sister Kitty, waiting for the day her fiancé returns from the West.

When Sherman’s troops destroy the mill, Clara’s plans to start a new life in Nebraska are threatened. Branded as traitors by the Federals, Clara, Kitty, and countless others are exiled to a desolate refugee prison hundreds of miles from home.

Cut off from all they've ever known, Clara clings to hope while grappling with doubts about her fiancé’s ambitions and the unsettling truths surrounding his absence. As the days pass, the sisters find themselves thrust onto the foreign streets of Cincinnati, a city teeming with uncertainty and hostility. She must summon reserves of courage, ingenuity, and strength she didn’t know she had if they are to survive in an unfamiliar, unwelcoming land.

Inspired by true events of the Civil War, The Lost Women of Mill Street is a vividly drawn novel about the bonds of sisterhood, the strength of women, and the repercussions of war on individual lives.

Get your copy of The Lost Women of Mill Street!

Connect with Kinley Bryan

Kinley Bryan's debut novel, Sisters of the Sweetwater Fury, inspired by the Great Lakes Storm of 1913 and her own family history, won the 2022 Publishers Weekly Selfies Award for adult fiction. An Ohio native, she lives in South Carolina with her husband and three children. The Lost Women of Mill Street is her second novel.

Connect with Kinley on her website, Twitter(X), Facebook, Instagram, Book Bub, Amazon Author Page, and Goodreads.