While it is the soldiers who are usually remembered, it is the civilians who keep life going during wartime. While soldiers were off fighting on the fields of war, civilians on the home front fought their own daily struggles, sometimes removed from the violence, but often deep within the maelstrom of conflict. This work looks at how war affected American civilians from colonial times to the Civil War. It provides readers with a detailed description of how women, children, slaves, and Native Americans coped with privation and looming threat, and how they often used, or tried to use, periods of turmoil to their own advantage. The chapters cover: wartime life during the American Colonial era; the American Revolution, and the effect of the war on civilians, including women, slaves, and Native Americans; the War of 1812, and life on the ever-expanding frontier and growing cities; American life during the Mexican War, and how that conflict amplified domestic tensions over the issues of national expansion and slavery; and life during the Civil War, with chapters devoted to how the war affected life in both the North and South. Part of the Greenwood Press "Daily Life Through History" series, this book looks at life in wartime from the viewpoint of ordinary the ordinary people affected by it; includes coverage of groups often neglected in traditional histories, such as women and slaves; and contains narrative chapters supported by biographical sketches and annotated primary documents.