Confederate women during the Civil war focused on preserving the central economic institution of the Old South: the plantation. With so many men away at war, women were left with the land and the slaves. While some women hired male overseers to assist them in directing and maintaining newly female-headed plantations, other women decided to stay at the plantations and run the plantations themselves. Southern women became focused on keeping the economic structure of the South as they dealt with increasingly rebellious slaves.