Bonnie Tsui - She Went to the Field: Women Soldiers of the Civil War

THE IDEA FOR THIS COLLECTION of profiles was conceived when I was a teenager. In the school library, I came across a dusty old book about a girl who dressed as a boy to fight in the American Civil War. The story inspired me to write a fanciful historical novella of my own on the subject, and the interest never left me. It developed further in a research paper I wrote for a class with Civil War historian William Gienapp at Harvard University, and my exploration was kindly encouraged by teaching fellow Libra Hilde. Why had the achievement of these women soldiers not yet seized the popular imagination? I am grateful that the project has at last come to fruition with my editor, Charlene Patterson, and the history imprint at The Globe Pequot Press.

More thanks to: Colonel Herbert E. Halliday, for his stories, his expertise in military history, and for connecting me to an invaluable resource, the U.S. Army Military History Institute; Sarah Hutcheon at the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University; Leslie Fields, Associate Curator at the Gilder Lehrman Collection of the Pierpont Morgan Library; Laurel Ulrich; James Duncan Philips, Professor of Early American History and Director of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, Harvard University; Drew Faust, Professor of History and Dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University; Laura Pappano, my original mentor and guide; and Marsha Osrow and Michael Dolber, who set me on this path so long ago.

The Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress. Series 1, General Correspondence, 18331916. A letter from Belle Boyd Hardinge to Abraham Lincoln, January 24, 1865. Available on-line at memory.loc.gov.

American Antiquarian Society. Available on-line at www.americanantiquarian.org.

American Battlefield Protection Program, National Park Service. Available on-line at www2.cr.nps.gov/abpp/index.htm.

American Museum of Photography. Available on-line at www.photographymuseum.com.

Bernstein, Iver. The New York City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Blanton, DeAnne. Women Soldiers of the Civil War. Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives (spring 1993). Available on-line at www.nara.gov.

Blanton, DeAnne, and Lauren M. Cook. They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002.

Boyd, Belle. Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison. Documenting the American South: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries. Available on-line at docsouth.unc.edu/boyd/menu.html.

Bradford, Sarah Hopkins. Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman. Auburn: W. J. Moses, 1869. Documenting the American South: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries. Available on-line at docsouth.unc.edu/neh/bradford/menu.html.

Bullough, Vern L., Olga Maranjian Church, and Alice P. Stein. American Nursing: A Biographical Dictionary. New York, London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1988.

Burgess, Lauren Cook, ed. An Uncommon Soldier: The Civil War Letters of Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, alias Pvt. Lyons Wakeman, 153rd Regiment, New York State Volunteers, 18621864. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Chesebro Genealogy. Available on-line at www.chesebro.net.

The Civil War: A film by Ken Burns, prod. and dir. Ken Burns, 690 mins., PBS Home Video, 1990, videocassette and DVD. Additional information available on-line at www.pbs.org/civilwar.

Civil War Nurse Clara Bartons Memorabilia Found, Nurse Week Magazine (15 December, 1997). Available on-line at www.nurseweek.com.

Clara Barton National Historic Site. Available on-line at www.nps.gov/clba.

Clausius, Gerhard. The Little Soldier of the Ninety-fifth: Albert D. J. Cashier. Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, (1958). Available on-line at www.alliancelibrarysystem.org.

Clinton, Catherine. The Other Civil War: American Women in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux, 1999.

Clinton, Catherine, and Nina Silber, eds. Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Coco, Gregory A. The Civil War Infantryman: In Camp, on the March, and in Battle. Gettysburg: Thomas Publications, 1996.

Confederate States of America Surgeon-Generals Office Standard Supply Table of the Indigenous Remedies for Field Service and the Sick in General Hospitals. [Richmond?]: s.n., 1863. Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries. Available on-line at docsouth.unc.edu/imls/remedies/menu.html.

Conklin, Mike. Jennie Came Marching Home: Downstate Women Battle to Preserve the Memory of a Civil War Soldier Who Spent Most of Her Life Posing as a Man, Chicago Tribune, 5 September, 2001.

Cumming, Kate. A Journal of Hospital Life in the Confederate Army of Tennessee. Louisville: John P. Morgan & Co.; New Orleans: W. Evelyn, 1866.

Dannett, Sylvia G. L. She Rode with the Generals: The True and Incredible Story of Sarah Emma Seelye, alias Franklin Thompson. New York: T. Nelson, 1960.

Dyer, Frederick H. Dyers Compendium of the War of the Rebellion. Des Moines: The Dyer Publishing Company, 1908. Available on-line at U.S. Army Military Institute, carlislewww.army.mil/usamhi.

Earl Conrad/Harriet Tubman Collection, 19391941 (1946). New York Public Library Digital Collections. Available on-line at digilib.nypl.org.

Edmonds, Sarah Emma. Memoirs of a Soldier, Nurse and Spy. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1999.

Edmonds, S. Emma. Nurse and Spy in the Union Army: Comprising the Adventures and Experiences of a Woman in Hospitals, Camps, and Battle-Fields. Hartford: W. S. Williams & Co., 1865.

Elizabeth Van Lew Papers, Manuscripts and Rare Books Department, Swem Library, College of William and Mary. Available on-line at www.swem.wm.edu.

Encyclopaedia Britannica. Available on-line at www.eb.com.

Farquhar, Michael. Rebel Rose, A Spy of Grande Dame Proportions. The Washington Post, 18 September, 2000, p. A01. Available on-line at www.washingtonpost.com.

Faust, Drew. Altars of Sacrifice: Confederate Women and the Narratives of War, Journal of American History 76 (March 1990).

Faust, Drew. Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War. New York: Vintage Books, 1997.

Faust, Patricia L., ed. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Civil War. New York: Harper & Row, 1986.

Fox, William F. Regimental Losses in the American Civil War 18611865. Dayton: Morningside Bookshop, 1985.

Gienapp, William E. Abraham Lincoln and the Border States. Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 13 (1992).

Gorman, Michael D. Civil War Richmond: An on-line research project designed to collect documents, photographs, and maps pertaining to Richmond, Virginia, during the Civil War. Available on-line at www.mdgorman.com.

Greenhow, Rose ONeal. My Imprisonment and the First Year of Abolition Rule at Washington, 18141864. Documenting the American South: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries. Available on-line at docsouth.unc.edu/greenhow/menu.html.

Hall, Richard. Patriots in Disguise. New York: Paragon House, 1993.

Hancock, Cornelia. A Union Nurse at Gettysburg. South After Gettysburg: Letters of Cornelia Hancock from the Army of the Potomac, 18631865. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1937.

Historical Collections from the Library of Congresss National Digital Library. Available on-line at memory.loc.gov.