Vermont’s remarkable Civil War battlefield record is well documented: breaking the flank of Pickett’s Charge, the great stand at Wilderness, the climactic assault at Petersburg.

But little is known of how Vermont women sustained the home front. With nearly 35,000 of the state’s able-bodied men at war, the monumental task of keeping more than 30,000 farms in operation became a female enterprise.

Women also took the place of men in factories and worked after hours making items needed by the soldiers. A Vermont woman edited anti-slavery newspapers and others spoke against slavery. Also, Vermont women served as nurses in the state’s military hospitals and in the war zone, taught newly-freed slaves in the South, and at least one Vermont woman appears to have secretly enlisted and fought in a Vermont regiment.

This story is told in their own words, from letters and diaries that describe life during the Civil War in the Green Mountain State, and is presented by Howard Coffin, a seventh-generation Vermonter. Howard Coffin is the author of four books on the Civil War with a focus on Vermont and the Champlain Corridor.