Villanova Professor's Book Exposes Role Of Women During Civil War

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - The nation is marking the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War this year, and one aspect which hasn't been discussed much is now the subject of a book by a local professor.

Judy Giesberg, a Villanova University history professor, wrote "Army at Home: Women and the Civil War on the Northern Home Front."

"There is definitely a new interest in knowing about women's experience in the Civil War. So I hope that over the next four years, when we have these different commemorative events, that women are represented in these events because they were there," Giesberg said.

One event, which happened in Allegheny in western Pennsylvania, involved an explosion at a factory where women and girls made cartridges for bullets. Almost 80 women were killed.

"In the Civil War, we kind of think of the home front, at least in the north, as being separate from the battlefield," Giesberg said. "But what I found at the arsenal was that women on the home front were very much involved in the war and the war was very much being waged at home as much as it was being waged on the battlefield and this explosion really brought that home for me."

She compares the Allegheny arsenal explosion to the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory decades later. Giesberg says there is a renewed interest in the role women played in the civil war because of the anniversary.

Reported by Kim Glovas, KYW Newsradio 1060