Women did not receive the right to vote until August 18, 1920 with the ratification of the 18th amendment. To this day, women still earn significantly less than their male counterparts in the workforce. At the time of the civil war, it was thought that a women’s place was in the home. Women were not viewed as the equal counterparts of men. Despite the inequalities that women faced during that time and still today, women played an important role in The Civil War. They served in every role from scouts to cooks, spies to nurses, and many women even fought in combat. Union and Confederate armies both forbid women from enlisted in the army; however, women still found a way to serve their country. The Civil War began on April 12, 1861 at Fort Sumter in South Carolina, and women played a vital role from beginning to end. Women were an important factor in the Civil War before it even began. Harriet Beecher Stowe was a white abolitionist. More importantly, she was the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Uncle Tom’s Cabin is based on the life a negro man and his struggles as a salve. The book showed the side of slavery that most northerners had never seen before. The book led to a spread in anti-slavery movements, the abolitionist movement, and eventually the Civil War. While fathers, sons, husbands, and brother alike were away at war, women had the task of maintaining the home front. Many may think that women sat at home and watched the children grow up while the men were fighting, but that is not the case, instead women were now the heads of the households. In the north, women already had many manufacturing jobs, including clothing and shoemaking. Wealthy men were able to avoid the draft, while those who were less fortunate were forced to enlist. This caused a great increase in the employment of women in all fields. Women needed these jobs to support their families; however, the wages were cut, making it hard for them to do so. They began running the family businesses and keeping up the farms. They learned new jobs, such as blacksmithing. They also took over the teaching field. Women on the home front were even important in the south because of the many shortages. With most of clothing and shoes being produced in the north; the south had to find alternative methods to get these things. The women were tasked with sewing clothing and making shoes amongst other things. Wealthy southern women relied on slaves to do their labor, but even female slave labor was questioned as to whether or not it was proper. In the south, the women were just as affected by the war as the men who were fighting. The battles were taking place in their towns and backyards. Soldiers invaded their homes and died in their yards. Mary Ann Gay speaks on surviving the burning of Atlanta by Sherman’s Army, “innumerable bullets, minie balls, and pieces of lead seemed to have been left by the irony of fate to supply sustenance to the hungry onesIt was so cold! Our feet were almost frozen, and our hands commenced to bleed and handling cold, rough lead cramped them so badly. Lead! Blood! Tears!” After the war, there was much conflict about whether women were to return to their “proper place” in the home. When men came back, most women were kicked out of their jobs, especially, government jobs. An important fact to consider is that the women who replaced men in these jobs were not given the same wages, much like in today’s society. Having a husband away at war is not an easy task, as previously proved. Not only were wives forced to work, they also deeply missed their husbands. There were no cell phones or computers to FaceTime, text, or call. Instead couples would write letters back and forth, waiting for weeks at a time for reply. A husband wrote a love letter to his wife, only to be killed in a battle one week later. He said “The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few daysLest I should not be able to write againSarah my love for you is deathless and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me unresistibly on with all these chains to the battle field.” No reply could mean that your husband has become a causality of the war. The enslaved wives of those who ran away to fight in the war were often punished for the wrongdoing of their husbands. A slave woman writes a letter to her husband saying, “It seems lik