Women in the civil war

From episode 5 of The Civil War, beginning at 53:31-56:34. Women who did contribute to the war effort in some unusual ways:
Louisa May Alcott, was a novelist who realized that she too, could help in the civil war effort. She worked at a hospital in Georgetown. The hospital she worked at was called Freedman's Hospital and it was established in 1862 to serve the needs of the growing population of freed slaves. This overcomes the stereotypes of the day because it was said that only males would be "intellectually capable of performing job's" according to The Cult of Domesticity and True Womanhood. She was one of the women who took a part in aiding the injured in the civil war, this even overcomes a stereo type still existing today, which is that only males are doctors. She overcame this stereo type that still exists in 1862, this shows a true act of bravery and if it wasn't for women like her that were able to stand up for what they believe in, who knows what our world would be like today.

Bibliography

Geneva, Tonsill. "Brick Layer Plasterer." 21 may 1855. 25 Nov 2008 http://memory.loc.gov/learn/lessons/psources/evans.html.

"Cotton Gin." Cotton Gin 1996 25 Nov 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin.

Hawkes, Ina. "My Ups and Downs." My Ups and Downs 9 October 1939. 25 Nov 2008 http://memory.loc.gov/learn/lessons/psources/georgia.html.

Primary Document 2

MY UP'S AND DOWN'S
Written By: Mrs. Ina B. Hawkes
Research Field Worker, Georgia Writers' Project, Athens -
Edited By: Mrs. Maggie B. Freeman
Editor, Georgia Writers' Project, Athens - WPA Area -6
October 9, 1939
September 14, 1939
[Kert Shorrow?] (Negro)
Route # 1, Athens, Georgia
Mrs. Ina B. Hawkes
MY UP'S AND DOWN'S
It was just a small Negro shanty, just off the highway. I went up to the front door. I noticed it was open, but I found the screen door shut and latched.
I came back down off the porch and walked around the house. I saw an old Negro woman coming down a little grassy lane. I walked up to meet her. She looked a little tired. She had a white cotton sack on her back where she had been picking cotton and a big sun hat on. She looked up and appeared very much surprised to see me.
"Good morning, Aunty. Do you live here?" She said, "Good morning, Miss. Yes, man, I lives here. I aint been here so long though. Is der something I can do for yo?"
I told her that I wanted to talk to her a little while if she had time. She said, "Yes'um, but you see I don't want to be [empolite?] cause I won't raised dat way. But if you will come in I will talk to you while
I fix a little dinner. I works in the field all I can."
About that time I saw a small boy coming around the house with his cotton sack.
"My name is [Sadie?]," she said, "and dis is my great grandson here. I'se got seventeen chillun, Honey."
"How did you manage with so many children, Aunty?" I asked. "By the help of the Lawd. We didn't have much, but you know what the old frog said when he went to the pond and found jus a little water, don't you? Well, he said, "A little is better than none.' Dat's de way I all'ers felt about things.
"I was born and raised in Walton County. But dey is done changed things back over der so much. I was over der to see my daughter while back and, Lawdy mussy, chile, dey is done built a new bridge ah didn't know nothing about.
"Here, Sammy, make mama a fire in de stove while I gits a few things ready to cook."
The little boy had a kerosine lamp over the blaze and, before I could stop myself, I had yelled at him to get it away from that blaze. Aunt Sadie said, "Dat's right, Miss. Correct him. Chillun des days don't see no danger in nothing.
"Back in my day as far back as I can remember
my mother and father was [Marse?] Holt and Mistess Holt's slaves. 'Case we chilluns wus too, but slavery times wus over fo I wus big nuf to know very much 'bout hit.
"But I do know about [Marse?] Holt and Mistess Holt. Lawd, child, dey wus de best people in de world I do think. Ole Mistess use to make us go to bed early. She would feed us out under a walnut tree. She wouldn't let us eat lak chilluns do now. We would have milk and bread, and dey would always save pot liquor left over from the vegetables. They put corn bread in it. We little Niggers sho' injoyed hit though. Sometimes we would get syrup and bread and now and then a biscuit.
"[Marse?] and Mistess died, but Ma and Pa and we chillun just stayed on and waked hard. Pa and Ma both wus good farmers. But, Honey, talk 'bout slavery times, hit's mor lak slavery times now with chillun dan it wus den. 'Cause us didn't have to go to de fields til we wus good size chillun. Now de poor things has to go time dey is big nuf to walk and tote a cotton sack.
"Miss Ruth is [Marse?] and Mistess Holt's daughter. I wus fortunate to know Miss Ruth. She larnt me to say my A B C's. If I didn't know them or say them fast nuf she would slap me and make me do hit right". She got up and went over to an old washstand and got an old blue
back speller. "Here," she said, "look at dis and you will see whut she taught me wid. You can see why I loves dat book. I don't let nobody bother wid dat.
"I sits and looks at my little book lots of times and think of dem good old days. I went to regular school two months in my life.
"I thought I wus grown when I hopped up and married."
..."My life, Honey, is jus been ups and downs . Me and
pa and the chilluns always jus had to stay home and work 'cept on Saddays. We would always go to town and church on Sundays. We would fix a big box of oats and get up soon Sadday morning, and Tom and the boys would hitch up old Buck to the cart. Yes, dat old ox wus jus as fast as anybody's mule. He would take us to town and bring us back safe.
"I never will forget one Sadday we wus in town. It wus a treat to jus go to town for us, the lights wus so pretty, but coming home dat day a man stopped us. Me and Tom had most of the chilluns with us. He said he wanted to take our pictures, so he could save it and show it ot his grandchilluns.
"We jus sold old Buck in 1934. He wus gitting old and couldn't plow and git 'bout lak he used too. And we needed a mule too.
"Lawdy, dere's Tom now. He come in the back door, a little man not much older looking than I is."....

Primary Document 1

E. W. Evans (Negro)
610 Parsons Street, S.W.
Brick Layer Plasterer
by Geneva Tonsill
"My parents were slaves on the plantation of John H. Hill, a slave owner in Madison, Georgia. I wuz born on May 21, 1855. I wuz owned and kept by J. H. Hill until just befo' surrender. I wuz a small boy when Sherman left here at the fall of Atlanta. He come through Madison on his march to the sea and we chillun hung out on the front fence from early morning 'til late in the evening, watching the soldiers go by. It took most of the day.
"My master wuz a Senator from Georgia, 'lected on the Whig ticket. He served two terms in Washington as Senator. His wife, our mistress, had charge of the slaves and plantation. She never seemed to like the idea of having slaves. Of course, I never heard her say she didn't want them but she wuz the one to free the slaves on the place befo' surrender. Since that I've felt she didn't want them in the first place. ...
The next week after Sherman passed through Madison, Miss Emily called the five ... wimmen ... women ... that wuz on the place and tole them to stay 'round the house and attend to things as they had always done until their husbands come back. She said they were free and could go wherever they wanted to. See ... she decided this befo surrender and tole them they could keep up just as befo' until their husbands could look after a place for them to stay. She meant that they could rent from her if they wanted to. In that number of ... wimmen ... women ... wuz my mother, Ellen, who worked as a seamstress for Mrs. Hill. The other ... wimmen ... women ... wuz aunt Lizzie and aunt Dinah, the washer- ...wimmen ... women ... , aunt Liza ... a seamstress to help my mother, and aunt Caroline ... the nurse for Miss Emily's chilluns.
"I never worked as a slave because I wuzn't ole 'nough. In 1864, when I wuz about nine years ole they sent me on a trial visit to the plantation to give me an idea of what I had to do some day.
{Begin page no. 2}
The place I'm talkin' about, when I wuz sent for the tryout, wuz on the outskirts of town. It wuz a house where they sent chilluns out ole 'nough to work for a sort of trainin'. I guess you'd call it the trainin' period. When the chilluns wuz near ten years ole they had this week's trial to get them used to the work they'd have to do when they reached ten years. At the age of ten years they wuz then sent to the field to work. They'd chop, hoe, pick cotton ... and pull fodder, corn, or anything else to be done on the plantation. I stayed at the place a whole week and wuz brought home on Saturday. That week's work showed me what I wuz to do when I wuz ten years ole. Well, this wuz just befo Sherman's march from Atlanta to the sea and I never got a chance to go to the plantation to work agin, for Miss Emily freed all on her place and soon after that we wuz emancipated.
"The soldiers I mentioned while ago that passed with Sherman carried provisions, hams, shoulders, meal, flour ... and other food. They had their cooks and other servants. I 'member seeing a woman in that crowd of servants. She had a baby in her arms. She hollered at us Chillun and said, 'You chilluns git off dat fence and go learn yore ABC's.' I thought she wuz crazy telling us that ... for we had never been 'lowed to learn nothing at all like reading a writing. I learned but it wuz after surrender and I wuz over tens years ole.
"It wuz soon after the soldiers passed with Sherman that Miss Emily called in all the ... wimmen ... women ... servants and told them they could take their chillun ... to the cabin and stay there until after the war. My father, George, had gone with Josh Hill, a son of Miss Emily's to wait on him. She told my mother to take us to that cabin until a place could be made for us.
{Begin page no. 3}
"I said I wuz born a slave but I wuz too young to know much about slavery. I wuz the property of the Hill family from 1855 to 1865, when freedom wuz declared and they said we wuz free. ...

Politics

With everything there always has to be politics involved, and the cotton gin was no exception. The creation of the cotton gin was a huge break through and many people who wanted a cotton gin but could not afford it, or somehow could not find means of obtaining a cotton gin, attempted to make their own cotton gin's. This led to the frustration of Eli Whitney and was quickly followed up with a lawsuit. However, because the people had used their own ways of creating the cotton gin, it was technically not illegal. The cotton gin was finally patented on March 14, 1774. Some think Catherine Littlefield Greene, who was Eli Whitney's landlady, should be given credit for the invention of the cotton gin, or at least with the original idea, because she shared the idea with him of how it would be great if there was a device to separate the cotton from the seed. Also a method that might do so, she suggested the use of a brush-like component in order to do so. There is also the debate that maybe the idea was the landlady, Greene's idea all along. Women were not allowed to obtain patents back in the late 1700's so there is the possibility that Greene had asked Whitney to get a patent on the cotton gin for her, and he passed the idea off as his own. So even a simple object like the cotton gin had politics involved in it, and the simple object made a huge impact on the world.

Simple things don’t always take the greatest minds, and most of the time, it’s the simple things that work the best.
-Nick Letendre

The cotton gin and today

The cotton gin had a negative impact with slavery, but in the bigger aspect of things, it was a great invention that showed what brilliant inventors of that time could do that still applies to this day. Without the invention of the cotton gin, other people might have given up while inventing things we still use today. The cotton gin was the start of the invention era, and it gave other inventors hope that they too, could invent something usefull. The cotton gin's invention helps todays world because now we have inventions like the computer and other great things that we might not have if people had not been inspired by the cotton gin.

Economics

Economics:
The cotton gin, which was short for cotton engine, was invented in 1793 by an American inventor named Eli Whitney. The cotton gin was a machine that separated the cotton and the seeds. Before the cotton gin, it took many hours, whereas the Cotton Gin automated the process and could produce 50 pounds or more of cotton per day. This caused the price of cotton to drastically drop because of price and demand, the cotton production went way up so it was worth less because there was so much of it. People of that time thought the cotton gin's invention would lower the number of enslaved people in America, but it did exactly the opposite. The number of slaves in the United States greatly increased because they needed more cotton in order to keep up with the amount of cotton that was going through the cotton gin, because it could now process it very quickly. The cotton gin also separated the north and the south even more leading up to the civil war. The north disapproved of slavery and because of that, the south's using more slaves for operation of the cotton gin angered the north, but it was not enough to have them do something about slavery because they relied on the production of cotton for their products as well. Eli Whitney attempted to patent the cotton gin in 1794, but was mostly unsuccessful because farmers would construct the gin and pass it off as a new invention with slight changes.