We have gone through that with the africanamerican men who had fought for the union had some ideas for what the union should be, and certainly white southerners had in idea about what america should be. The northerners who won had an idea, the indians and the chinese at west had ideas about what america should be and certainly the northern men who had won the war had ideas about what the country should be. The critical question as to what it was going to be was who was going to have a say in it. We have gone to that as well, but who had a say in what that new nation was going to be was going to have a dramatic affect on what it eventually became. Today i want to talk about women and womens lives in the late 19th century and their role in what was really the reconstruction, the true rebuilding of the north, south, and the west into a new nation in the wake of the civil war. The story of women is more crucial to that story than most people realize. Most people when they think about women