““The fact remains that women and children were left vulnerable to sickness and disease, manipulative slaveholders, and even apathetic Union officers during the Civil War. While historians interpreted the enlistment of black soldiers as an illustration of the patriotic commitment of former slaves to take on the Confederate enemy and to dismantle the institution of slavery, this depiction overlooks the disastrous and fatal effects on the women and children left behind.36 The enlistment of black men in the Union army as soldiers and laborers in Vicksburg, Mississippi, for instance, left more than 10,000 women and children without the means to survive.””
