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The War Of The Civil War

Decent Essays

There are no doubts that acts of war can have a negative impact on the individuals involved. There are countless stories of the soldiers’ experiences in the war, and how it affected their lives, families, and attitudes. However, there is a large demographic that is hardly accounted for: children, specifically during the Civil War era. Understanding the children that lived in the time of the Civil War is important because it affected their future careers, shaped their attitudes towards race, and affected their home lives, and through this understanding that should be provided by historians, it allows the audience today insight into contemporary issues.
The future careers and ventures of the children who grew up during the Civil War may have been shaped by the way they experienced the events. James Marten suggests “the war could become a foundation for personal beliefs and philosophies as they applied the lessons of war to their careers” (220). This is evident in the story of Anna Howard Shaw, who was a child living in the Civil War. She became a leader of the women’s suffrage movement in the United States, but this may have not been the case if she didn’t have an “obvious resentment at being left with her sisters and mother to fend for themselves in the wilds of Michigan by her father and brothers” (220). She was deeply affected by the time of the war because it left her sisters and mother helpless, which may be why she decided to lead the fight for women’s rights. The

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