The Purity Crusade, Progressivism, and the Development of Women’s Reformatories: From the Civil War to 1920

Abstract

“The Civil War produced an abrupt shift from the pessimism of the 1850s to a renewed spirit of patriotism and a restored faith in the larger society” (Foner 1988: 26). The mobilization for the war moved northern upper- and middle-class women into various organizational activities outside the home. For the first time, women became involved in administering large-scale organizations that relied on good business sense, more than moral fervor, for success. The U.S. Sanitary Commission and its main branch, the Woman’s Central Association of Relief in New York, organized the supplying of food and clothing to the Union army, the training and deployment of nurses to the front, and the establishment of a network of local and regional centers for fund-raising and the acquisition and distribution of war provisions (Clinton 1984: 81; Ginzberg 1990: 143–73).