She Went to the Field: Women Soldiers of the Civil War

She Went to the Field: Women Soldiers of the Civil War PDF

Author: Bonnie Tsui

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2006-07-01

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 1461748496

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This exciting new volume profiles several substantiated cases of female soldiers during the American Civil War, including Sarah Rosetta Wakeman (aka Private Lyons Wakeman, Union); Sarah Emma Edmonds (aka Private Frank Thompson, Union); Loreta Janeta Velazquez (aka Lieutenant Harry T. Buford, Confederate); and Jennie Hodgers (aka Private Albert D. J. Cashier, Union). Also featured are those women who may not have posed as male soldiers but who nonetheless pushed gender boundaries to act boldly in related military capacities, as spies, nurses, and vivandieres ("daughters of the regiment") who bore the flag in battle, rallied troops, and cared for the wounded. Examining the Civil War through the lens of these women soldiers who fought in the conflict offers valuable insight on existing historical work. This volume will acquaint readers with these women, offering in-depth biographies and behind-the-scenes information. While drawing from recent academic work, Women Soldiers of the Civl War is a lively text geared toward the general-audience reader.

I'll Pass for Your Comrade

I'll Pass for Your Comrade PDF

Author: Anita Silvey

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13: 9780618574919

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Sarah Emma Edmonds enlisted because she believed in the Union cause; Melverina Peppercorn joined to stay near her twin brother. Although women were not allowed to enlist as soldiers in the Civil War, many disguised themselves as men and fought anyway.

Behind the Rifle

Behind the Rifle PDF

Author: Shelby Harriel-Hidlebaugh

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2019-02-25

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 1496822021

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During the Civil War, Mississippi’s strategic location bordering the Mississippi River and the state’s system of railroads drew the attention of opposing forces who clashed in major battles for control over these resources. The names of these engagements—Vicksburg, Jackson, Port Gibson, Corinth, Iuka, Tupelo, and Brice’s Crossroads—along with the narratives of the men who fought there resonate in Civil War literature. However, Mississippi’s chronicle of military involvement in the Civil War is not one of men alone. Surprisingly, there were a number of female soldiers disguised as males who stood shoulder to shoulder with them on the firing lines across the state. Behind the Rifle: Women Soldiers in Civil War Mississippi is a groundbreaking study that discusses women soldiers with a connection to Mississippi—either those who hailed from the Magnolia State or those from elsewhere who fought in Mississippi battles. Readers will learn who they were, why they chose to fight at a time when military service for women was banned, and the horrors they experienced. Included are two maps and over twenty period photographs of locations relative to the stories of these female fighters along with images of some of the women themselves. The product of over ten years of research, this work provides new details of formerly recorded female fighters, debunks some cases, and introduces over twenty previously undocumented ones. Among these are women soldiers who were involved in such battles beyond Mississippi as Shiloh, Antietam, and Gettysburg. Readers will also find new documentation regarding female fighters held as prisoners of war in such notorious prisons as Andersonville.

They Fought Like Demons

They Fought Like Demons PDF

Author: DeAnne Blanton

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2002-09-01

Total Pages: 439

ISBN-13: 0807158569

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Popular images of women during the American Civil War include self-sacrificing nurses, romantic spies, and brave ladies maintaining hearth and home in the absence of their men. However, as DeAnne Blanton and Lauren M. Cook show in their remarkable new study, that conventional picture does not tell the entire story. Hundreds of women assumed male aliases, disguised themselves in men’s uniforms, and charged into battle as Union and Confederate soldiers—facing down not only the guns of the adversary but also the gender prejudices of society. They Fought Like Demons is the first book to fully explore and explain these women, their experiences as combatants, and the controversial issues surrounding their military service. Relying on more than a decade of research in primary sources, Blanton and Cook document over 240 women in uniform and find that their reasons for fighting mirrored those of men—-patriotism, honor, heritage, and a desire for excitement. Some enlisted to remain with husbands or brothers, while others had dressed as men before the war. Some so enjoyed being freed from traditional women’s roles that they continued their masquerade well after 1865. The authors describe how Yankee and Rebel women soldiers eluded detection, some for many years, and even merited promotion. Their comrades often did not discover the deception until the “young boy” in their company was wounded, killed, or gave birth. In addition to examining the details of everyday military life and the harsh challenges of -warfare for these women—which included injury, capture, and imprisonment—Blanton and Cook discuss the female warrior as an icon in nineteenth-century popular culture and why -twentieth-century historians and society ignored women soldiers’ contributions. Shattering the negative assumptions long held about Civil War distaff soldiers, this sophisticated and dynamic work sheds much-needed light on an unusual and overlooked facet of the Civil War experience.

Women at the Front

Women at the Front PDF

Author: Jane E. Schultz

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2005-12-15

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 0807864153

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As many as 20,000 women worked in Union and Confederate hospitals during America's bloodiest war. Black and white, and from various social classes, these women served as nurses, administrators, matrons, seamstresses, cooks, laundresses, and custodial workers. Jane E. Schultz provides the first full history of these female relief workers, showing how the domestic and military arenas merged in Civil War America, blurring the line between homefront and battlefront. Schultz uses government records, private manuscripts, and published sources by and about women hospital workers, some of whom are familiar--such as Dorothea Dix, Clara Barton, Louisa May Alcott, and Sojourner Truth--but most of whom are not well-known. Examining the lives and legacies of these women, Schultz considers who they were, how they became involved in wartime hospital work, how they adjusted to it, and how they challenged it. She demonstrates that class, race, and gender roles linked female workers with soldiers, both black and white, but became sites of conflict between the women and doctors and even among themselves. Schultz also explores the women's postwar lives--their professional and domestic choices, their pursuit of pensions, and their memorials to the war in published narratives. Surprisingly few parlayed their war experience into postwar medical work, and their extremely varied postwar experiences, Schultz argues, defy any simple narrative of pre-professionalism, triumphalism, or conciliation.

Occupied Women

Occupied Women PDF

Author: LeeAnn Whites

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2009-06-15

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0807143952

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In the spring of 1861, tens of thousands of young men formed military companies and offered to fight for their country. Near the end of the Civil War, nearly half of the adult male population of the North and a staggering 90 percent of eligible white males in the South had joined the military. With their husbands, sons, and fathers away, legions of women took on additional duties formerly handled by males, and many also faced the ordeal of having their homes occupied by enemy troops. With occupation, the home front and the battlefield merged to create an unanticipated second front where civilians-mainly women-resisted what they perceived as unjust domination. In Occupied Women, twelve distinguished historians consider how women's reactions to occupation affected both the strategies of military leaders and ultimately even the outcome of the Civil War. Alecia P. Long, Lisa Tendrich Frank, E. Susan Barber, and Charles F. Ritter explore occupation as an incubator of military policies that reflected occupied women's activism. Margaret Creighton, Kristen L. Streater, LeeAnn Whites, and Cita Cook examine specific locations where citizens both enforced and evaded these military policies. Leslie A. Schwalm, Victoria E. Bynum, and Joan E. Cashin look at the occupation as part of complex and overlapping differences in race, class, and culture. An epilogue by Judith Giesberg emphasizes these themes. Some essays reinterpret legendary encounters between military men and occupied women, such as those prompted by General Butler's infamous "Woman Order" and Sherman's March to the Sea. Others explore new areas such as the development of military policy with regard to sexual justice. Throughout, the contributors examine the common experiences of occupied women and address the unique situations faced by women, whether Union, Confederate, or freed. Civil War historians have traditionally depicted Confederate women as rendered inert by occupying armies, but these essays demonstrate that women came together to form a strong, localized resistance to military invasion. Guerrilla activity, for example, occurred with the support and active participation of women on the home front. Women ran the domestic supply line of food, shelter, and information that proved critical to guerrilla tactics. By broadening the discussion of the Civil War to include what LeeAnn Whites calls the "relational field of battle," this pioneering collection helps reconfigure the location of conflict and the chronology of the American Civil War.

Women on the Civil War Battlefront

Women on the Civil War Battlefront PDF

Author: Richard Hall

Publisher:

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13:

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Drawing on a wealth of regimental histories, newspaper archives, and a host of previously unreported accounts, Hall shows that women served in more capacities and in greater number-perhaps several thousand-than has previously been known. They served in the infantry, cavalry, and artillery and as spies, scouts, saboteurs, smugglers, and frontline nurses. From all walks of life, they followed husbands and lovers into battle, often in male disguise that remained undiscovered until they were wounded (or gave birth), and endured the same hardships and dangers as did their male counterparts.

Great Women of the Civil War

Great Women of the Civil War PDF

Author: Kirsten Schefelton

Publisher: Capstone

Published: 2014-07-01

Total Pages: 33

ISBN-13: 1491407190

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"Describes key women involved in the American Civil War, including workers of the Underground Railroad, spies, abolitionists, and battlefield nurses"--

An Uncommon Soldier

An Uncommon Soldier PDF

Author: Sarah Rosetta Wakeman

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 134

ISBN-13: 9780195102437

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Originally published: Pasadena, Md.: Minerva Center, 1994.

Liberia's Women Veterans

Liberia's Women Veterans PDF

Author: Leena Vastapuu

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2018-03-15

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1786990822

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The Liberian civil wars of the 1990s and 2000s became notorious for their atrocities, and for the widespread use of child soldiers. Girls and young women accounted for up to 40 per cent of these soldiers, but their unique perspective and experiences have largely been excluded from accounts of the conflict. In Liberia's Women Veterans, Leena Vastapuu uses an innovative auto-photographic methodology to tell the story of two of Africa's most brutal civil wars through the eyes of 133 female former soldiers. Incorporating their testimonies alongside a series of vivid illustrations by Emmi Nieminen, the book provides an in-depth account of these women's experiences of trauma, stigma, and the challenges of reintegration into post-war society, as well as their hopes and aspirations for the future. Vastapuu argues that these women, too often been perceived merely as passive victims of the conflict, can in fact play an important role in post-war reconciliation and peace-building. Overturning gendered perceptions of warfare and militarism, the book provides a unique take on humanitarian practices and post-conflict societies, making essential reading for policymakers as well as students and scholars across the humanities and social sciences.