Although it is well documented that women did not all sit idly by at home, most did stay as close to their antebellum home as possible. Women went with their soldiers; married, cooked, cleaned, and kept a tight roving home on the battlefront. They fought along side their male counterparts, usually without them knowing. Nurses and sanitary workers abounded, keeping the wounded and battle weary as safe and healthy as their standards would then allow. They made fabulous spies, hiding documents and other things in places gentlemen never thought to look. But, for the most part, they kept the home fires burning.

Women were patriots first during this battle. On both sides, it was the women more often and more fervently than the parades and speeches that drove men to enlist. Women often refused favors for beaus that did not jump to fight for the cause. They sang songs of the romantic side of soldiering. They gave kisses to newly enlisted men. They promised their love to near total strangers on occasion, much like during the Second World War.

The job of a woman whose men in her life enlisted was to make sure they had every thing they needed to go off to war. This meant a lot of sewing. Uniforms must be made (or bought if funds allowed), socks darned, soap and other essentials manufactured. At the beginning of the war, many uniforms were elaborately made and overly embellished. The most infamous of these were the caps with long backs, ideally to keep the sun off the neck as the soldier moved. Though well intentioned, most of the elaborate garb was quickly discarded as the soldier went to camp. The most needed item was the two (at least) pairs of socks. Many women passed the long years of the war knitting socks to send off to the boys at the front, who went through them as fast as they were made.

The women had to carry on the family businesses in the absence of the men. This meant that women, who were less educated than their husbands, must now take over running farms, handling money, keeping the slaves in line. This was hardly ever an easy job. But, many learned fast and occasionally did better than their absent husbands.

An odd thing noted by many historians of families in the war was the plight shared by women, all women. Black and white women seemed to strangely bond in their grief and worry over the deprivation caused by years of struggle. This does not belittle the greater struggle of the slave women, but it did give the white women a bond which helped foster the idea of abolition.