Behind the Rifle: Women Soldiers in Civil War Mississippi 2018041165, 2018044142, 9781496822024, 9781496822031, 9781496822048, 9781496822055, 9781496822017

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BEHIND the RIFLE

BEHIND the RIFLE Women Soldiers in Civil War Mississippi

SHELBY HARRIEL University Press of Mississippi • Jackson

The University Press of Mississippi is the scholarly publishing agency of the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning: Alcorn State University, Delta State University, Jackson State University, Mississippi State University, Mississippi University for Women, Mississippi Valley State University, University of Mississippi, and University of Southern Mississippi. www.upress.state.ms.us Designed by Peter D. Halverson The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of University Presses. Copyright © 2019 by University Press of Mississippi All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States First printing 2019 ∞ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Harriel, Shelby, 1974– author. Title: Behind the rifle : women soldiers in Civil War Mississippi / Shelby Harriel. Description: Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2018041165 (print) | LCCN 2018044142 (ebook) | ISBN 9781496822024 (epub single) | ISBN 9781496822031 (epub institutional) | ISBN 9781496822048 (pdf single) | ISBN 9781496822055 (pdf institutional) | ISBN 9781496822017 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Women soldiers—United States—History—19th century. | United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Participation, Female. | Women—United States—History—19th century. | United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Women. Classification: LCC E628 (ebook) | LCC E628 .H376 2018 (print) | DDC 973.7/408209762—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018041165 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

For my loving parents, Shelton and Cindy Harriel, who have always encouraged me and facilitated my interest in learning from a very young age. To my patient and devoted fiancé, Mark Hidlebaugh, whose love, support, and knowledge in all things military are invaluable. To Mark’s parents, John and Dixie Hidlebaugh, who raised him to be the true gentleman he is. And, to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, to whom I give all the honor and the glory.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Chapter 1: Motivations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Chapter 2: Women as Soldiers in the Field and Prisoners of War

Their Hardships. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Chapter 3: Paying the Price

Women Soldiers Killed and Wounded in Action . . . . . . . . . 38 Chapter 4: Mississippi’s Women Soldiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Chapter 5: Corinth and Iuka. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Chapter 6: Mississippi Central Railroad Campaign to Holly Springs. . . 80 Chapter 7: Chickasaw Bayou . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Chapter 8: Port Gibson to Big Black . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 Chapter 9: The May Assaults . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 Chapter 10: The Siege of Vicksburg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Chapter 11: Natchez and the Siege of Jackson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 Chapter 12: Brice’s Crossroads and Tupelo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 Addendum: Myths and Mysteries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It is a challenging task trying to find individuals who do not want to be found, whether they are in our current time or existed in the past. Such is the case for researching women soldiers. Their defiance of not only the law but societal standards of the time by wearing male clothing and enlisting in the military typically earned them a trip to jail, as well as a fine and a tarnished reputation for themselves and their families. Unsurprisingly, some of these women upon discovery bluntly refused to provide information that they knew would find its way into newspapers nationwide. Either that or they supplied not only false male aliases but incorrect feminine ones as well. Female combatants were not the only ones who could find themselves in trouble when they defied societal norms and an unwritten military law barring them from serving. Enlisted men and officers alike could be—and were—court martialed whenever women were discovered in their units, whether they were aware of them or not. Such was the fate of Lieutenant Amandus Schnabel, who was found guilty of creating a false muster roll and defrauding the government of an able-bodied soldier when Caroline Newcom was discovered in Colonel William Gilpin’s Missouri Infantry Volunteers during the Mexican War. Likewise for Private H. C. Steele of the 3rd Illinois Cavalry, Private William Scott of the 13th Indiana Cavalry, Captain Jerome Taft of the 59th New York Infantry, and Captain William Boyd of the 1st New York Cavalry, who all faced charges for conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline when women were discovered in their units. And so when women decided to slip quietly into the ranks, it proved to be a risky venture for all, men and women alike. As there certainly was a motive present, it would not be surprising to learn that officials may have expunged service records. And there are accounts that ix

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point towards this possibly being the case. For example, Mary Scaberry’s medical record listing her service in the 52nd Ohio Infantry as “Private Charles Freeman” survives, yet she does not have service records. Nor does she appear on the unit’s roster. Likewise for Frances Hook, whose medical records show that she served in the 90th Illinois Infantry. But as with Scaberry, no service records exist for “Private Frank Miller.” So there appears to have been a concerted effort from many involved to have eradicated the record of women’s service as soldiers during the Civil War. Governmental officials after the war even denied that records ever existed at all. Of course, this is untrue as evidenced by the medical documents mentioned above found in the National Archives. How, then, does a researcher navigate his or her way through this forgotten and hidden history? Unfortunately, one cannot turn exclusively to the women themselves since only five are thus far known to have written letters. Only two published memoirs, and they have proven to be at least somewhat fictionalized and romanticized in some instances. With so few sources available, a researcher must therefore look to accounts recorded by others, specifically military or governmental officials, newspaper reporters, or male soldiers who wrote about them in either letters or diaries. This approach is no different from what researchers must do to fill in the blanks when documenting the service of their own male relatives who left no first-hand accounts of their experiences because of illiteracy or the loss of their journals and letters. It is just a part of the methodology researchers utilize in order to find the ghosts of the past, even those such as women soldiers of the Civil War who wished to remain nameless in the shadows. I have been extremely blessed by individuals who have helped me chase phantom identities over the last ten years. Among these are friends who generously passed along accounts from soldiers’ diaries or letters that they found while conducting their own unrelated research. There have also been complete strangers who graciously donated their time and energy in providing me with copies of various documents housed in libraries, archives, and historical societies. Without the assistance of these people, this book would not have been possible, and I am grateful for them more than they can ever know. First, I would like to express my deepest appreciation to my wonderful colleagues at Pearl River Community College for their unwavering support. Cynthia Wetzel (retired) and the PRCC library staff worked

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tirelessly to provide me with materials I requested. In no particular order, I would also like to thank DeAnne Blanton at the National Archives along with Lauren Cook Wike; Kate Scott, Indiana Historical Society; Michael Vetman, Indiana State Archives; Carol Mc Gee, Bureau County Genealogical Society; Patrick Kerwin, Library of Congress; Carolyn Ravenscroft, Duxbury Rural & Historical Society; Marvin Steinback, ranger at Port Hudson State Historic Site; Anna Selfridge, Allen County (Ohio) Museum and Historical Society; Elizabeth Joyner, Vicksburg National Military Park (retired); Jeff Giambrone, Joe Wise, Mike Allard, and Jim Woodrick, Mississippi Department of Archives and History; Tom Parson, ranger at the Corinth Civil War Interpretive Center; Nan Card, Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center; Karalea Clough, Nevada Historical Society; Greg Wade; Richard Holloway; Dr. J. Ransom Clark; Pat and Jim Swan; Mancil Milligan Jr.; Shane Christen; Aaron Rowland; Phil Hinderberger; Elmer Divens; Tom Travis; Sean “Ezra” Cowger; Wendy Ramsburg; Audrey Scanlan-Teller; Tracey McIntyre, Janine Delcamp; Bob Welch; Sammy Lievsay; Anita Henderson; Melinda Cordell; Dwayne Bremer; Mark Flotow; Lucas Bernard; Kathy Kroeger; and Kevin Frye. There are others who allowed me to use photographs or documents in their private collections. Their names appear in the bibliography. And then there are individuals whose contributions did not appear in this volume but will in the next one. And, of course, this book would not have been possible without the vision, patience, and guidance from Katie Keene, Mary Heath, Robert Norrell, and the wonderful staff of the University Press of Mississippi.

BEHIND the RIFLE

Battles involving women in Civil War Mississippi. Created by Hal Jespersen.

Vicksburg Campaign battles involving women. Created by Hal Jespersen.

INTRODUCTION

“War upsets a good many customs and traditions and proves among other things that the strictly human element rather than the feminine comes first in women in emergencies just as it predominates in men.” “Women as Soldiers,” Indianapolis Star, August 29, 1917

During the Civil War, both armies were acutely aware of the strategic importance of Mississippi. “The Father of Waters,” the Gulf of Mexico, and the system of railroads in the interior provided vital supply routes and military access. The state’s Civil War history is filled with innovative and daring deeds undertaken in an effort to control these resources, from Nathan Bedford Forrest’s aggressive use of cavalry, to Ulysses S. Grant’s attempt to reroute the Mississippi River, to common soldiers’ display of uncommon valor while behind the rifle. All of these brave men helped shape the state’s history. However, Mississippi’s chronicle of military involvement in the Civil War is not one of men alone. Surprisingly, there were a number of women disguised as men who joined them on firing lines across the state. The cannons had barely fallen silent across the war-torn country when writers began recounting the stories of female fighters who were determined to share the burden in the struggle for their respective country’s cause. Readers of the time could learn of the heroic feats of these women by perusing such publications as the United States Service Magazine, Volume 3 (1865), Frank Moore’s Women of the War (1866), Richard Miller Devans’s The Pictorial Book of Anecdotes and Incidents of the War of the Rebellion (1866), and History of Woman Suffrage, Volume 2 (1887) by the trio of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Matilda Gage. 5

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Most of these earlier works were summaries of wartime newspaper articles with some merely containing complete reprints of them. Yet, these pieces nevertheless demonstrated the widespread reach of the stories of women soldiers while providing a glimpse of the Victorian authors’ perception of them, which often proved to be favorable despite the social impropriety involved in their decision to “unsex” themselves. As a matter of fact, Henry Coppée, editor of the United States Service Magazine, defended women soldiers and even cautioned his readers against judging them for enlisting. He declared, “Those who generalize on the impropriety and unladylikeness of such conduct . . . know very little of the vast variety of the phases which humanity assumes, or of the strange and wonderful moulds into which it is forced by Nature and circumstances.”1 As time marched on into the twentieth century and more wartime historians began to fade away, so too did public support and interest in women soldiers. According to authors Blanton and Cook, this decline was because of “cultural backlash” stemming from the broadening of women’s economic and legal status. As a result of changing social views, the public no longer revered the sacrifices of female soldiers and even began to renounce them. Inevitably, historians started to portray women who defied societal standards as sexually and mentally abnormal. For example, readers can find such disparaging depictions of Civil War female combatants in Mary Elizabeth Massey’s Bonnet Brigades: American Women and the Civil War (1966), republished as Women in the Civil War in 1994, and Bell Irvin Wiley’s The Life of Johnny Reb and Billy Yank (1952), the former declaring that Victorian society viewed them as “mentally unbalanced or immoral” while the latter indirectly referred to them as “freaks and distinct types.”2 Neither offered definitive evidence to support their claims. As the end of the twentieth century neared and women’s military roles began to expand, historians started to take a fresh new scholarly approach to studying women soldiers and presented them in a more realistic light as opposed to fanciful, romantic heroines or lustful harlots. Among those making contributions to the body of research included Wendy King in Clad in Uniform: Women Soldiers of the Civil War (1992), Richard Hall in Patriots in Disguise: Women Warriors of the Civil War (1993), Lauren Burgess in An Uncommon Soldier: The Civil War Letters of Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, Alias Private Lyons Wakeman, 153rd Regiment, New York (1993), Linda Grant DePauw in Battle Cries and Lullabies: Women in War from

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Prehistory to the Present (1998), and Elizabeth Leonard in All the Daring the Soldier: Women of the Civil War Armies (1999). Then in 2002, DeAnne Blanton and Lauren Cook published their exhaustive research in They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the Civil War. The following year, Bonnie Tsui released She Went to the Field: Women Soldiers of the Civil War and Larry G. Eggleston Women in the Civil War: Extraordinary Stories of Soldiers, Spies, Nurses, Doctors, Crusaders, and Others. Expanding on his own research and that of others, Richard Hall returned in 2006 with Women on the Civil War Battlefront. Subsequently, Anita Silvey and Melinda Cordell published works geared towards young adults in I’ll Pass for Your Comrade: Women Soldiers in the Civil War (2008) and Courageous Women: Soldiers, Spies, Medics, and More (2016) respectively. While all of these publications contribute to the history of women soldiers in the Civil War, albeit minor in some cases, Blanton and Cook’s They Fought Like Demons, has endured as the seminal work on the topic. Therefore, the body of research has remained fairly stagnant since 2002. Furthermore, with the exception of Blanton and Cook, King, and Silvey, none of the aforementioned authors focus exclusively on women soldiers, including nurses and spies in their works as well. As for Mississippi history, such notable researchers as Edwin C. Bearss, Michael B. Ballard, Terrence J. Winschel, Timothy B. Smith, Thomas E. Parson, and Jim Woodrick have made significant contributions in documenting the state’s role in the Civil War. While some highlight the experiences of civilian women, only Woodrick references the participation of women soldiers in Mississippi battles, specifically the siege of Jackson. This is not surprising considering the volume of material researchers must navigate. Furthermore, the topic of female soldiers is still relatively untapped and in need of serious study, with their stories unexposed to those scholars who do not specifically go in search of them. So it is understandable that authors would overlook an obscure part of Mississippi Civil War history. This book helps fill in the gaps by providing a reader with a more complete understanding regarding the makeup of the soldiery on firing lines across the state. Furthermore, the research herein enhances the body of knowledge of women soldiers in general by providing new details of formerly recorded female fighters, debunking some cases, and introducing previously undocumented ones.

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The accounts of these female fighters are not singular in history. Researchers can trace tales of women warriors from various cultures back to ancient times. For example, Hatshepsut chose to forego feminine clothing and donned traditional male regalia when she became pharaoh of Egypt. Thus attired, she led a campaign into Nubia during her reign in the fifteenth century BC. Two hundred years later in China, Fu Hao led thousands of men into battle during the Shang Dynasty. Weapons that archaeologists excavated from her tomb revealed her status as one of the most powerful military leaders of her time. During the first century AD, Celtic Queen Boudica led a brutal revolt against the oppressive Roman army occupying Britain. Though a failure, the uprising resulted in the Romans eventually easing their harsh rule. The warrior queen’s legacy of resisting a tyrannical foreign power procured her status as a cultural icon. Then, during the Renaissance, Joan of Arc became a heroine for leading the French to victory over the English at Orleans in 1429. She was captured the following year while wearing male clothing and burned at the stake for heresy. Her role in the Hundred Years’ War and sacrifice served as an inspiration for adventurous and bold women who followed in her footsteps by taking up arms for their respective causes. Beyond Joan of Arc, others undoubtedly would have heard of Hannah Snell, who enlisted as “James Gray” in the Royal Marines and served for over two years. In 1750, she surprised her male comrades when she revealed to them that their young, beardless compatriot was really a woman in disguise. Upon their urging, Snell sought and received a pension for her military service. Not only did she reveal her secret to her fellow Marines, Snell also told her story to London publisher Robert Walker, who chronicled her tale in The Female Soldier, or, The Surprising Life and Adventures of Hannah Snell, which he released in 1750. In July of that year, The Gentleman’s Magazine also printed her exploits, and Snell herself appeared on stage in uniform recounting her experiences as a Marine while demonstrating military drill maneuvers and singing songs. As for United States history, women engaged in battle from the country’s inception. One such female soldier of the American Revolution was Deborah Samson (or Sampson) of Massachusetts, who was one of seven children from a poor family headed by a widowed mother. At the age of ten, she became an indentured servant and worked in that capacity until she turned eighteen, when the self-educated Samson began a career as

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a teacher and weaver. With the outbreak of hostilities, Deborah started to entertain the notion of joining in the struggle for independence as a soldier. Then, in 1782, she put her plan into motion when she enlisted in the 4th Massachusetts Regiment of the Continental Army. As “Robert Shurtliff,” she suffered multiple wounds and even removed a musket ball herself in order to avoid detection that would result from a surgeon performing the operation. The determined Deborah was able to maintain her disguise for two years until Dr. Benjamin Binney discovered her secret while caring for her after she fell ill. Samson received an honorable discharge on October 23, 1783, and returned home to Massachusetts, where she married and had children. Upon the support of Paul Revere, the state issued her a pension for her military service. And following her death in 1827, her husband, Benjamin Gannett, successfully petitioned Congress to issue him a pension as a soldier’s spouse for his wife’s service in the Revolutionary War. Nearly thirty years after the cessation of hostilities with the British, the newly formed country faced off once again against its old adversaries in the War of 1812. According to newspaper articles, at least two women participated as soldiers in the conflict that historians have called the “second war of American independence.” These unknown women were wives of farmers who served in the militia called to defend the border with Canada. The stalwart female fighters went with them and were discovered among the volunteers who had fought in the Battle of Lundy’s Lane.3 Twenty years following Revolutionary heroine Deborah Samson’s death, another woman soldier followed her path of military service. On September 26, 1847, Elizabeth Caroline Newcom enlisted at Fort Leavenworth in Company D of the Missouri Mounted Volunteers, a unit raised to protect the Santa Fe Trail from Indian attacks. As “Bill Newcom,” she marched with the regiment to Fort Mann in Kansas, where she was ultimately discovered. Following this revelation, military officials sent Newcom back to Fort Leavenworth, where she was discharged. After the Mexican War, she married and received a pension for eight months’ military service. On December 1, 1847, the Cincinnati Enquirer carried an article from October 11 written by J. G. H. Tobin, a Mexican War correspondent with the New Orleans Delta, detailing the peculiar story of a soldier named Luke Surrey. Tobin noted that the Vicksburg native was a “smart, dapper

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little fellow” whose service with the 2nd Mississippi Regiment ended prematurely. But his dismissal was not due to incompetence or misbehavior. Indeed, the youngster performed all his soldierly duties admirably. Rather, Surrey was discharged when “his” true gender was revealed after giving birth. Following this revelation, Tobin quipped that the Mexicans declared that “it was hard enough to fight the Americans when they sent men against us, but when the women come, and bring little soldiers with them, we must be beaten.” He further joked that this event led the 2nd Mississippi to seek a patent for the discovery that female fighters giving birth in the ranks would “save Uncle Sam the expense of forwarding any more soldiers to Mexico.” A search of the roster of the 2nd Mississippi Regiment failed to locate an individual named Luke Surrey. There are several possible reasons. Officials expunged her records; she served as an officer’s servant and was not a formally enlisted soldier, which means she would not have had any service records; or this was a hoax. Not long after the cessation of hostilities with Mexico, the winds of war began to blow once again—just a whisper at first, and then escalating into a hurricane whose roar fell on the ears of many more women as the country marched towards another conflict. But unlike the previous wars, in which the young nation faced foreign powers, this was a war with itself—a civil war. Scholars have often referred to it as a war of “brother against brother.” As this book unfolds, the reader will also learn that it pitted “sister against sister.”

Chapter 1 MOTIVATIONS

“Her patriotism outran her discretion.”

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women fought on the front lines of both armies in the Civil War. Historians will never be able to determine their exact number because they served while disguised as men. The Washington, DC, newspaper, The National Republican, claimed in its July 23, 1864, edition that official records showed that approximately a hundred and fifty female recruits had been discovered since the outbreak of hostilities. After the war, Mary Livermore, a nurse with the US Sanitary Commission, noted a higher tally in her memoirs, My Story of the War. “Some one has stated the number of women soldiers . . . as little less than four hundred,” she claimed. It is unknown who exactly that “some one” was or how that individual derived the approximate figure of four hundred. Yet it is a number that constantly appears in works involving women soldiers of the Civil War. Livermore herself stated that she could not vouch for the veracity of this estimate and actually believed it be higher. In 2002, authors Blanton and Cook provided a contrasting conclusion to Livermore when they were able to document about 250 women soldiers in They Fought Like Demons. Four years later, Richard Hall published Women on the Civil War Battlefront, in which he stated that his ongoing research led him to believe that there were “at least a thousand, possibly several thousand.”1 Even if the tally was in the higher end of Hall’s estimate, the fact is that the number of female combatants was miniscule compared to the millions of men who fought, which renders them insignificant as a group. Regardless, their resolve to serve as soldiers is notable. Even though they 11

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were not feminists and did not directly campaign for women’s rights, activists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony pointed to the service and sacrifice of women combatants as illustrative of the fact that women possessed interests outside the home and could be productive citizens beyond the domestic sphere. Advocates used this evidence to help eventually secure political and civil rights for women. Furthermore, female fighters helped pave the way for current women soldiers to serve in all combat roles, a right the government granted them in 2015, over 150 years after women were already fighting and dying on Civil War battlefields. Perhaps even more remarkable is the fact that Victorian society dictated that they were not supposed to be there. Although, at least one woman claimed she was unaware that the standards of the time forbade her from serving in the military. When officials discovered this anonymous female fighter disguised as “Henry Bell” in the ranks of the 52nd Ohio Infantry, she matter-of-factly informed them, “The Governor advertised for recruits without specifying whether they should be male or female.” Officers nevertheless failed to accept her rationale and discharged her, though she had already served without incident for four months.2 They were there from the beginning to the end, participating in nearly every major battle in the eastern, western, and trans-Mississippi theaters. In fact, one woman, Mary Smith, fought in all three with the 24th Iowa Infantry. However, she did so in disguise. Because military officials did not permit women to serve in the military at the time, Smith and her fellow sister soldiers boldly defied strict societal norms when they cut off their tresses, exchanged their dresses for trousers, and assumed male aliases in order to fight for their respective causes. Although the experiences of female soldiers were exceptional in many ways, they were nevertheless similar to civilian women during the Civil War in that they expanded their range of opportunities and choices, thereby achieving a greater sense of independence. Indeed, these daring and diligent women demonstrated their ability to adapt to changing conditions. And they did so while rejecting Victorian constructs of femininity. Even though these women warriors were remarkable, they were often no different from the men with whom they served. For example, the backgrounds of these female fighters were as varied as those of their male counterparts. They hailed from cities and farms from nearly every state in the country at the time of the war. There is even an account of a

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woman known as “Scarfaced Charley” who lived on the Comstock Lode in Nevada. During the Civil War, she allegedly fought with an unnamed cavalry unit until she suffered a saber wound to the face, which ultimately revealed her secret. The sensational event garnered unwanted publicity that caused her to flee the area.3 Among them were Irish, Scottish, German, and Canadian immigrants. At least one was a Native American, Stella Ross Christian, a Cherokee who was wounded and discovered at the Battle of Pea Ridge. At least eight were black. At least four of them pulled off the ultimate ruse as black women disguised as white men. One of those reportedly enlisted in a Confederate artillery unit, and another served for several weeks in Miles’ Legion, which was also a Confederate unit. Her story appears in a later chapter.4 Most women soldiers came from poor, working-class, or farming backgrounds, where they learned skills necessary to become successful soldiers. So when they enlisted, they were already adept at shooting, riding horses, and performing other tasks involving manual labor. Indeed, the skills that these working women possessed were often based on functional needs as opposed to academic. Unsurprisingly, most of them had little to no opportunities for a formal education because of their socioeconomic status, yet there were some exceptions. A fourteen-year-old Pennsylvania girl who enlisted as a drummer using the alias “Charles Martin” learned to read and write during her young life. She utilized her literacy skills by serving as a clerk for the officers of her regiment. Jane Perkins’s antebellum career revolved around education. Before enlisting in a Virginia artillery unit, she was a teacher, as was Kentuckian Mary Ann Clark, who was college educated and well informed in politics and literature. She came from a well-to-do family headed by a father who was a minister. Like Clark, Ella Reno was a learned young woman who hailed from an influential family. Newspapers reported that she had “very respectable family relatives” in Cincinnati and that she had received a superior education in a convent in Wheeling.5 Research reveals not only similar demographics between male and female soldiers, but also that motivating factors leading women to enlist were often no different from those of men. Letters, diaries, and memoirs written by both men and women, in addition to period newspaper articles, indicate that the fair sex possessed a sense of patriotism like their male

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counterparts. Cordelia Scales of Holly Springs lamented that her gender limited her participation in the war, “It seems so hard that we who have the wills of men should be denied from engaging in this great struggle for liberty just because we are ladies.” Scales’s sense of social order ultimately kept her out of the military. Likewise for Sarah Morgan of Baton Rouge, who rued the fact that her sex hindered her from shouldering a musket for the Southern cause. “O! If I was only a man! Then I could . . . slay them with a will.”6 Unlike Scales and Morgan, some women allowed their devotion to cause and country to carry them across the threshold of impropriety and into the ranks. As a reporter said of a woman soldier serving in a Wisconsin regiment, “Her patriotism outran her discretion.” This sense of patriotism matched or, in some cases, exceeded that of the men with whom they served. Cousins Mary and Mollie Bell of the 36th Virginia Infantry boasted of their devotion to the Southern cause and claimed that if other women were as patriotic as they were, the Confederacy would have gained its independence long ago. On the Federal side, Private Albert Westgate of the 4th Michigan Infantry mentioned in a letter to his brother that the women soldiers in his regiment “are very patriotic to destroy this infernal rebellion by what ever it takes.” Like many of their male comrades in 1862, these Michigander female fighters felt so passionately about the success of their cause that they did not temper their criticism of their overall commander for his reluctance to fight. According to Westgate, “They say M’Clellan has been a shit ass for sitting around all the time when he should be driving rebs back to Richmond.”7 Economic opportunity was another factor that led women to enlist. Indeed, the military served as a source of income for many citizens, men and women alike. After William O’Day was unable to obtain a living in Iowa, he headed south to the Magnolia State seeking job opportunities. He ultimately found employment as a private in the 17th Mississippi Infantry. O’Day enlisted in the unit at Corinth shortly after the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, serving for seventeen months until he deserted. Yankees picked him up in Virginia and undoubtedly thought the Irish Midwesterner to be a spy. “My reason for enlisting was because I was out of employment,” he informed them. Such as with O’Day, financial stability enticed women to enter the ranks as well. But unlike men, these women had to go to greater lengths by disguising themselves in order to

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take advantage of opportunities—such as serving in the military—denied them because of their gender. These resourceful women were able to earn more money than they ever could while working in the few respectable professions available to them at the time. For example, a maid could make approximately $4 to $7 per month, cooks $7 to $8 per month, and laundresses up to $10 per month.8 Therefore, it is not surprising that the prospect of receiving a sizable bounty and doubling their monthly wages by earning a soldier’s pay of $11 per month for Confederates and $13 per month for Federals lured some women into the ranks. One woman told a reporter with the Nashville Daily Union that she made 75 cents per week as a house servant. However, after leaving that position to serve as a teamster, or wagoner, attached to an Ohio regiment, she claimed in the article appearing on June 19, 1862, that she dramatically boosted her wages to $25 per month. With this increase in income, these female fighters were not only able to establish a financially independent lifestyle for themselves, but they were also able to provide monetary assistance for loved ones back home, two endeavors they would have been unable to accomplish as extensively in their traditional feminine roles. Such is the case of Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, a yeoman farm girl from Afton, New York, who left her indebted family before the war. “I knew I could help you more to leave home than to stay there with you,” she explained to them in a letter. Rosetta realized that the most effective way to earn enough money to provide adequate assistance for her family was to seek employment disguised as a male. She initially found a job in Binghamton, where she worked “half a month” for $4. She then took a job as a coal handler on a barge making $20 for four trips on the Chenango Canal. It was while working in this capacity that she encountered recruiters for the 153rd New York Infantry, who offered her a bounty of $152 and a soldier’s pay of $13 per month. Enticed by this new opportunity, the fivefoot tall, brown haired, blue eyed Rosetta enlisted as “Lyons Wakeman” on August 30, 1862. She sent money home to her family throughout her service. “I want you should spend it for the family in clothing or something to eat,” she told them. “I can get all the money I want.”9 When Rosetta enlisted, she was nineteen years old and still single with no apparent prospects of marriage. Even though Victorian society would view Wakeman’s spinsterhood as a failure, she was nevertheless able to take care of herself. Others, however, were not as self-sufficient

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Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, “Private Lyons Wakeman,” Co. H, 153rd New York Infantry. Private collection of Lauren M. Cook.

and depended on men for support and emotional fulfillment. Oftentimes, their husbands, brothers, or fathers were the only family members these women had, and when their loved ones enlisted in the military, they followed them into the ranks in order to avoid being separated from them. Martha Parks Lindley left her two children in the care of her sister and enlisted as “James Smith” in Company D of the 6th US Cavalry so she could follow her spouse, William. “I was so anxious to be with my husband that I resolved to see the thing through if it killed me,” she told a

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newspaper reporter after the war. Irish immigrant Jane Perkins said she followed her brother to war because she “did not want to be left alone in a strange country.” Years after the war, Nannie Davis Smith shared a story of a Louisiana woman soldier who served with her husband and brother, the only family she had. Smith’s grand uncle, Jefferson Davis, told her the account during one of her visits to Beauvoir, his post-war home located in Biloxi, Mississippi, on the Gulf Coast. The former president of the Confederacy said that the soldier woman came to him in confidence to seek a discharge after her relatives were killed. The tragic event led her to fear that suffering a wound would lead to the discovery of her true identity and that newspapers from around the country would shame her for “unsexing” herself. So she wished to serve as a nurse instead. Smith did not say whether Davis acquiesced to the woman’s request. A woman known only as “Joseph Davidson” or “Joe Davis” told newspaper reporters that she fought with her father in the 59th Ohio Infantry until he was killed at her side during the Battle of Chickamauga. She continued to serve without him. And then there was Mrs. Wilkinson from Boston, who undoubtedly created an awkward situation for her son when she enlisted with him in an unnamed regiment and served briefly until military officials discovered her. According to Charlotte Bradford, a Sanitary Commission worker in Washington, DC, Mrs. Wilkinson was allowed to remain as a “daughter of the regiment,” vivandière, or cantinère.10 Women serving in this capacity accompanied the unit and provided water for the men as well as cooking, sewing, laundressing, and nursing services. For the women who initially stayed behind and ultimately had to endure the loss of a fallen family member in battle, the burning desire for vengeance drove some to join the ranks. According to the Pittston (PA) Gazette on October 3, 1861, Mary Smith enlisted in the 41st Ohio Infantry in order to avenge the death of her only brother, who was killed at First Manassas. Her quest ended prematurely, however, when her superior sewing abilities and the feminine manner with which she wrung out a dishtowel aroused the suspicion of her male comrades. She admitted her ruse and was discharged. Vengeance also propelled a North Carolina girl to join a group of conscripts after her brother was killed during the Seven Days in 1862. Like Mary Smith, this unknown girl was unsuccessful in her mission. However, it was mathematics and not mannerisms that exposed this female Tar Heel. The Western Sentinel reported on August 1, 1862, that

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when an officer’s roll call at the camp of instruction in Raleigh revealed that there was one extra soldier, an ensuing investigation led to the girl’s discovery. Her fair features ultimately gave her away. She then divulged her identity and motive for attempting to join the ranks. And then there is the account of Charlotte Hope, whose tragic story is often cited by researchers, authors, and journalists as an example of a woman enlisting in the military in order to avenge the death of a loved one. According to the narrative, which appeared in George C. Eggleston’s Southern Soldier Stories in 1898, Hope provided assistance with reconnaissance about the area surrounding her residence for the 1st Virginia Cavalry, in which Eggleston briefly served as a sergeant major. While acting as a guide, she fell in love with one of the troopers. And when he was killed in a raid, the grieving Charlotte disguised herself as “Charlie Hopper” and accompanied the regiment with the objective of sending twenty-one Yankees into eternity, one for each year of her slain lover’s life. However, before she could place the final notch on her belt, Hope herself met the same deadly fate as her sweetheart. While this tale possesses all of the elements of a heart-wrenching tragedy, research reveals that Eggleston embellished the girl’s story. Over twenty years before the account of Charlotte Hope appeared in Southern Soldier Stories, Eggleston mentioned her in A Rebel’s Recollections, published in 1875. Even though he never referred to Charlotte Hope by name in this earlier account, it is apparent that he was referring to her. He described her as a young girl not more than sixteen who acted as a guide on a scouting expedition early in the war. When Eggleston and his comrades began to receive fire during one of the outings, the troopers urged Hope to seek safety in the rear. However, the girl refused because she “wanted to see the fun.” It was this spirited response that likely inspired Eggleston to invent “Charlie Hopper.” Charlotte Hope did exist, but she was a guide only and not a soldier. As it turned out, Eggleston fabricated not only her military service, but her tragic demise in a raid as well. Genealogical research reveals that Charlotte survived the war and lived until 1914.11 While there were women who enlisted to be near a male relative or loved one, some joined the ranks in order to escape them. Such is the case of Sarah Emma Edmonds of Michigan, who fled her father’s fits of rage brought on by the bitterness he harbored over the fact that he had no strong sons to help him work his farm. Emma recalled, “In our family the

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Sarah Emma Edmonds, 1867, courtesy Michigan Historical Center.

Sarah Emma Edmonds as “Franklin Thompson,” Co. F, 2nd Michigan Infantry, courtesy Michigan Historical Center.

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women were not sheltered but enslaved.” To compound her despondent situation, her father, Isaac, announced that he had arranged a marital union between his seventeen-year-old daughter and an elderly neighbor, which prompted visions of misery for Emma’s future. After witnessing her own mother’s wretchedness, Edmonds stated, “Very early in life I was forced to the conclusion, from close observation and bitter experience, that matrimony was not a safe investment for me.” In an article appearing in the Fort Scott Weekly Monitor on January 27, 1884, she indicated that her only option for living the independent life she desired was to leave home in male disguise. Thus, Edmonds was able to escape a life that she feared would turn abusive and oppressive. Kentuckian Mary Ann Clark, however, was not as proactive, at least not until it was nearly too late. She and her children suffered years of cruelty at the hands of her husband, George Walker, before he finally abandoned them and headed to California. There, he wed another woman while still married to Mary Ann and wrote her to inform her of his adulterous activities. As if that were not vile enough, he further stated that he intended to bring his new bride back to Kentucky. This revelation hurled Clark into a dismal emotional abyss. According to her mother, “a dark gloom appeared to hang over her.” And so, in order to flee her dysfunctional life, Mary Ann Clark left her children in a convent, disguised herself as “Henry Clark,” and joined the cavalry.12 Then there was Maria Lewis, who escaped the ultimate oppressive situation when the sixteen-year-old slave from Albemarle County, Virginia, ran away from her master and found a safe haven with the 8th New York Cavalry as “George Harris.” A light-skinned black woman, Lewis rode in the front ranks of a white regiment and fought alongside her white male comrades. While the officers were aware of her true identity and protected her, the rest of the men in the regiment knew neither that she was black nor a woman.13 For mistreated women such as Maria Lewis, Emma Edmonds, and Mary Ann Clark, the military served as a refuge that provided structure and stability that they had been unable to experience previously in their tormented lives. Not only were women attempting to flee oppressive situations that condemned them to a virtual prison, some joined the military in order to escape incarceration from a literal one. Such is the case of Nellie Bryant, who was doing time in the Georgia State Penitentiary in Milledgeville for

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helping her husband break out of a jail in Macon. On January 26, 1864, the Confederate Union reported that Nellie herself managed to escape by using a pair of scissors to dig a hole in her cell wall. Before she and three of her fellow female convicts bolted, the brazen Bryant left a taunting note for Colonel Green, the principal keeper, informing him of her plans to leave and that she would like to have her trunk forwarded to her. Or if Green managed to capture her, she said she would still like her belongings. Bryant then added a postscript begging his pardon for her poor handwriting. She had grown weary from the physical exertion of her excavation. Nellie then boarded the cars for Eatonville after purchasing train fare for herself and three of her companions. Not only did the resourceful Bryant acquire tickets, she also managed to procure at least two military uniforms. Nellie changed into one of them, and one of her fellow convicts donned the other as the band fled eastward. Their flight came to an end in Augusta, however, when an officer from the penitentiary overtook and captured them. On February 2, 1864, the Confederate Union reported that when she was taken, Nellie Bryant was on the verge of mustering in to a company there in Augusta. Accounts do not mention whether the other uniformed woman had also attempted to enlist. Later that year, another woman prisoner fled the penitentiary at Milledgeville. It was not a pair of scissors that facilitated this escape, however. In this case, it was fire. Some accounts claim that Major General William T. Sherman’s men burned the facility during the march to the sea, while others say it was female prisoners who were the culprits. Apparently, they did not want to be left behind after officials released the male inmates so that they might provide aid in resisting the advancing Federals. Regardless, the female convicts took flight while flame engulfed the prison walls. One of those who escaped was an apparent prostitute who managed to acquire a Federal uniform and enlisted in the 33rd Indiana Infantry, where as one historian noted, she “plied an ancient trade.” However, while a chaplain serving with the 22nd Wisconsin remarked that she was a “hard case,” he made no mention of her prostituting herself. Accompanying this woman into the ranks of Sherman’s corps was a fellow male prisoner who had been convicted of murder in Adairsville.14 While there were women seeking to flee oppressive situations as well as the consequences of poor life choices, some were also trying to escape what they deemed to be a boring and strict, feminine lifestyle. Lizzie

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Cook of Appanoose County, Iowa, attempted to enlist in a Union unit at Benton Barracks, Missouri, partially out of her “disgust at the monotony of her woman’s life.” She was also motivated by a sense of patriotism and a desire to reach her brother, who was serving in the 5th Kansas Infantry as a sergeant. However, a hospital matron at the barracks thwarted her plans when she detected Lizzie’s disguise and exposed her true identity. For fellow Midwesterner Rebecca “Georgianna” Peterman of Ellenboro, Wisconsin, “plain country life was not enough for her ambition,” according to one of her former schoolteachers. It is only natural that Peterman’s adventurous spirit led to her desire to “see what war was about.” As a member of the 7th Wisconsin Infantry of the Iron Brigade, she was able to experience all she wanted.15 On August 26, 1864, the New York Times carried the story of another Midwesterner. According to the article, Jane Short of Shawneetown, Illinois, enlisted as “Charley Davis” in the 6th Illinois Cavalry and served until an illness led to a trip to a hospital, where she was discovered. After recovering, she then traveled to Memphis, where she joined the band of the 21st Missouri Infantry (US) as a bass drummer because she was “pining for the excitement of glorious war.” However, there was a limit to Short’s thrill-seeking, and that was marked by Nathan Bedford Forrest. When she learned that military officials had ordered her unit to pursue the feared Confederate cavalry leader, Jane promptly turned herself in along with her friend, Lou Morris, who had been serving with her. To women like Cook, Peterman, and Short, war was a liberating adventure that placed them at the center of a dime novel. Indeed, Victorian women would have had access to a variety of publications illustrating thrilling stories of daring young ladies, whose tales, both true and fictional, inspired some women to enlist. Fanny Campbell: The Female Pirate Captain emboldened Sarah Emma Edmonds to leave her troubled home life. She disguised herself as a man and sold Bibles before the war. Upon the outbreak of hostilities, she enlisted in the 2nd Michigan Infantry as “Franklin Thompson” and would go on to publish her own adventures in her memoirs, Nurse and Spy, in 1864. Edmonds was not the first woman soldier to record her story. In 1797, Revolutionary War heroine Deborah Samson shared her experiences in The Female Review, which could have possibly influenced others to follow in her footsteps. Other women may have perused The Female Volunteer, which included the tales of a fictional

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Mexican War veteran named Eliza Allen. After the Civil War began, the female warrior motif continued to appear in various formats. Newspapers, including the Madison Daily Patriot of June 14, advertised musical dramas such as The Female Soldier during the first year of the war. And throughout the conflict, writers continued to publish such popular novels as The Lady Lieutenant (1862), Pauline of the Potomac (1862), Dora of the Cumberland (1864), Castine (1865), and Miriam Rivers (1865). The thrilling exploits narrated in these novels, in addition to stories passed down orally of such heroines as Joan of Arc, instilled in some women a desire to experience the romance and adventure of it all for themselves. However, they, along with their like-minded, spirited male counterparts, would soon discover the fallacy of such fantasies as the horrors of the battlefield became a sobering reality for all involved.

Chapter 2 WOMEN AS SOLDIERS IN THE FIELD AND PRISONERS OF WAR

Their Hardships “It is astonishing . . . how she stood up under it.” Jeffersonian Democrat, August 16, 1861

Women soldiers were not sheltered from terror or suffering. Indeed, their wartime experiences mirrored those of their male counterparts. They performed the same physically demanding duties and endured the hardships of living a soldier’s life, endeavors that did not go unnoticed. Private Albert Westgate of the 4th Michigan Infantry wrote respectfully about several spirited women soldiers with whom he had served picket duty, “They are good soldiers and take their share of the duty and they are also fair shots, too.” On August 16, 1861, the Jeffersonian Democrat carried a story about a woman soldier serving with the 1st Kentucky Infantry (US). One of her male comrades noticed that she “carried her musket and knapsack the whole time, and never complained or lagged behind.” This correspondent was amazed at how the female soldier, known as “John Thompson,” was able to withstand the physical challenge. Indeed, Thompson was especially driven to do everything she could to ensure that she remain with the regiment because she was also engaging in espionage while in the ranks. But it was not carelessness in her craft that ultimately betrayed her. Oddly enough, it was the feminine manner in which she donned her socks that gave away her ruse a couple of months into her service. A search of her person yielded documents and letters detailing 24

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troop movements and positions. When officials confronted her with the evidence, she admitted that she was not only a spy but also a member of the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secret organization whose mission was to extend slave-holding territory. She acknowledged that she knew that a spy’s fate was death and that she was “ready whenever they wished to shoot her.” However, military officials did not execute her. Rather, they initially sent her to Gallipolis, Ohio, and then on to Columbus. Her ultimate fate is unknown. But she may have made her way east to Utica, New York. There, in 1864, military officials arrested a woman named Jennie Thompson wearing men’s clothes and using the alias “James Thompson.” A search of her person yielded a manuscript of the constitution and bylaws of the Knights of the Golden Circle.1 In addition to suffering from the physical strain of cumbersome equipment and fatiguing marches, women soldiers also had to withstand exposure to extreme weather conditions, hunger from poor and insufficient food, and thirst from inadequate or impotable water. The stress from enduring these hardships took a toll on soldiers, a number of whom began to succumb to a variety of diseases as a result. Women soldiers were not immune from the illnesses that claimed more lives than violence during the war. Indeed, sickness led to the discovery and discharge of some. Such is the case of Mary G. Scaberry, alias “Charles Freeman,” who entered a hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, with a fever while serving with the 52nd Ohio Infantry. But it was her lack of “sextual compatibility” with military regulations that led to her dismissal from the service after medical personnel learned her secret in November 1862.2 Scaberry was one of the fortunate ones. For other women soldiers, disease not only claimed their secrets but also their lives. An unidentified Missouri trooper serving in a Federal unit managed to survive her first enlistment with her identity intact, only to succumb to a fever a couple of months after re-enlisting as a veteran in 1863. Hospital workers at Overton in Memphis learned her secret but not her name. The following year, disease claimed the life of one of her female Federal compatriots who was serving in Louisiana. By the conclusion of the Red River Campaign, Sarah Rosetta Wakeman and her comrades with the 153rd New York Infantry had endured the physical strain of marching over four hundred miles in a subtropical climate, in addition to suffering from a lack of nutritious food and adequate water. The demanding conditions began to take a toll

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on many Federal soldiers, including Wakeman, who fell ill with chronic diarrhea. Her body yielded to the debilitating disease in a New Orleans hospital on June 19, 1864. She is buried in Chalmette National Cemetery with her male alias, “Lyons Wakeman,” carved upon the headstone of grave 4066.3 Disease claimed the lives of other female soldiers in addition to Rosetta. In the waning weeks of the war, a woman known only as “Charley H.,” who was serving in an unknown eastern Federal unit, passed away from measles in a hospital in Tullahoma, Tennessee. In an account appearing in the National Tribune on August 12, 1882, the doctor who nailed her coffin shut stated that he had promised her to keep her secret, which he did for seventeen years. Women soldiers not only succumbed to disease but also to the poor fortunes of war when they fell into the hands of the enemy. While confined at Atlanta following his capture during the Battle of Chickamauga, Captain Benjamin F. Campbell of the 36th Illinois Infantry recorded in his diary on September 24, 1863, “We found in the prison yard one woman dressed in male attire.” Campbell did not elaborate on who she was or what happened to her.4 Some captors immediately released their female prisoners and spared them from enduring further incarceration. Such is the case of Texans who captured a fifteen-year-old girl serving in the Federal army during fighting along the Tennessee-Kentucky state line in 1862. “We kept her two or three hours and then turned her loose,” explained Private M.A. Harvey of the 8th Texas Cavalry in a letter to his niece.5 However, some female prisoners of war were not so fortunate and ended up languishing in the most notorious prisons of the conflict. For instance, there are several accounts of women soldiers who endured the deplorable conditions and misery alongside male prisoners at Andersonville. The account of Philadelphia native Florena Budwin is perhaps the most widespread, yet researchers have thus far been unable to positively document much about her life and prisoner-of-war experience. She and her husband were supposedly serving together in an artillery unit when they were captured in the vicinity of Charleston and sent to Andersonville. Fellow prisoner Corporal Samuel Elliott of the 7th Pennsylvania Reserves, who frequently saw Florena pass his detachment on her way to retrieve water from the swamp that ran through the prison, described her as “rather above medium height, sunburnt, with long, unkempt hair. Her clothing consisted

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Prisoners at Andersonville. Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-34562.

of a rough gray shirt, a pair of worn-out army trousers, and what was once a military cap.” Elliott claimed that her husband, a captain, had also been in the prison but confessed that he did not actually see him. Nor did he know what happened to him. It appears that Elliott’s basis for thinking Captain Budwin was in Andersonville was that he “heard [Florena] spoken of by older prisoners as a married woman.” Other sources say that he was killed by guards. And yet others claimed he died in the unnamed battle in which Budwin was captured. If the captain survived the battle and was indeed a prisoner with his wife, he must have perished early on in his incarceration, because Florena was without him in the stockade. She did have guardians, however. According to Elliott, two men looked after her and protected her from harm. Beginning in September 1864, Confederates transferred Elliott, Budwin, and thousands of other prisoners to a stockade in Florence, South Carolina, in an effort to shield them from Sherman, who was storming through Georgia. If her two guardians went with her, they were unable to save her from discovery there. Several versions of her detection exist. A post-war account appearing on May 9, 1870, in the New York Tribune claims she died while giving birth to twins, who ultimately perished. Elliott, however, did not reference this event. As a matter of fact, he must

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have lost track of her after their arrival from Andersonville. His only mention of her at Florence involved citing a rumor that Confederates detailed her as a nurse in the prison hospital after they learned her secret, and that she contracted pneumonia, which resulted in her death. However, this account may be confused with that of a civilian woman prisoner held at Andersonville named Margaret Leonard. She accompanied her husband, Private Isaac Newton Leonard, in the 2nd Massachusetts Heavy Artillery and served as a cook until captured. Upon arrival at Andersonville with her husband and other prisoners, Leonard initially worked in the hospital. Other sources do not mention Budwin serving as a nurse but do remark that a surgeon discovered her while treating her for pneumonia.6 This is a more likely scenario considering that researchers have thus far failed to find any wartime accounts from soldiers mentioning Florena at Florence, which suggests that she remained undetected until death. Regardless, Budwin suffered while confined in the Florence stockade. To provide a little relief, she built a small hut in order to shield her from the elements. After someone pointed out her shelter to a visitor after the war, he referred to the shanty and those of her fellow prisoners as “pitiable abodes,” far from adequate to protect them from their horrid environment. As a matter of fact, prisoners stated that the conditions they endured at Florence were even more severe than the situation at Andersonville. Elliott declared, “This den is ten times worse than that at Andersonville.” Another prisoner, Private John McElroy of the 16th Illinois Cavalry, echoed his sentiments, “All who experienced confinement in the two places are united in pronouncing Florence to be, on the whole, much the worse place, and more fatal to life.”7 Florena came to realize this in the few months she was at Florence because she died there at the young age of twenty-one on January 25, 1865, a mere month before Confederates paroled sick prisoners and sent them north. A former soldier imprisoned at Florence, Major Louis R. Fortescue, mentioned in a post-war interview that he had heard of her death while confined in the stockade, though he admitted to lacking personal knowledge of the event. Florena Budwin is buried in section D, grave 2480 in Florence National Cemetery.8 Out of the more than two thousand unknowns interred in sixteen trenches, Budwin’s grave is the only one that is marked with a headstone. She is believed to be the first woman buried in a national cemetery. However, Chalmette National Cemetery was established a

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Prisoners at Florence Military Prison, South Carolina. Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-121343.

year before Florence and serves as the resting place of Rosetta Wakeman who was buried over six months before Budwin. But Wakeman is buried under her male alias, “Lyons Wakeman,” whereas Budwin’s feminine name appears on her headstone. Other female soldiers, such as Fanny Wilson, died before Budwin and were removed to national cemeteries established after Florence. Efforts to find Florena and her husband, John, have been fruitless. Examination of census reports has thus far failed to yield any conclusive results, and there is no one with the name of Budwin or a variation of such on any roster of Pennsylvania troops. Because of the lack of definitive evidence, some researchers doubt she even existed and explain that her grave marker may have been erected as a tribute to a legend, or that it was a hoax. Yet, cemetery records reportedly listed her death. While these documents were lost shortly after the war, an interment form exists. And her name appears in the Roll of Honor, denoting Federal volunteers who died in the service of their country.9 Some believe she was a prostitute working outside the stockade. As the theory goes, upon her death from an illness, townspeople convinced military officials that she was a soldier so they could bury her with her comrades instead of disgrace their town

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by burying her with their citizens. This seems an unlikely scenario. The townspeople could have simply buried her in any random location outside their town instead of going through the effort of concocting an elaborate story to have her buried in a soldier’s cemetery. Military officials likely would not have believed their tale anyway. Researchers base part of their skepticism of Budwin’s story on their inability to at least locate her alleged husband’s military records. But he may not have even existed. It may be that Florena’s account of her serving with her husband, a captain, could have become intermingled with that of Mrs. Janie Hunt who spent time in Andersonville with her husband, Harry Hunt, a captain of a coasting vessel based in New York. When the newlyweds married in the summer of 1863, they took their guests on an ill-fated pleasure cruise during which Federals aboard a revenue cutter stopped them and ordered Captain Hunt to North Carolina to pick up a load of corn. In the process of carrying out the directive, Confederates captured the vessel and sent Harry to Andersonville. Janie went with him to avoid being separated from him. The couple remained prisoners of war for approximately a year, during which time Janie delivered a baby within the stockade.10 Florena Budwin is a true enigma. Though there are few definitive facts regarding her service as a soldier, her account may very well be genuine. With so little information available about Budwin when she died, individuals likely began to mistakenly piece together her story using elements of others who were better known. Indeed, given the common threads that appear in the narratives of Florena Budwin, Margaret Leonard, and Janie Hunt—such as working as a nurse in the prison hospital, giving birth in the stockade, and serving with a husband who was a captain—it is reasonable to surmise that Leonard’s and Hunt’s accounts have become forever intertwined with Budwin’s. Florena herself may have even contributed to her own garbled story. Because nobody ever claimed to have actually seen her husband, Captain John Budwin, it is plausible that early in her incarceration, Florena may very well have concocted the account of serving with a male loved one in order to garner sympathy and support from her fellow male soldiers. By using romanticism as a tool, some women warriors were able to craft an identity for the press and public that allowed them to remain within the sphere of Victorian womanhood, thereby gaining favor from men. At least

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two other women soldiers, Frances Hook and Mary Ann Clark, did just that. Florena may very well have, also. Another source of qualms surrounding her story involves her name. However, she most assuredly provided an alias just prior to her death. Indeed, Florena may have been a derivation of Florence, the name of the stockade where she ultimately perished. The alias, Florena, itself may not have even been her correct name. The Roll of Honor along with some articles appearing shortly after the war noted her name as Florence, the same as the stockade.11 And then Colonel J. P. S. Tobin of the 47th Pennsylvania Infantry claimed in a letter to the editor reprinted in The New Berne Times on October 14, 1865, after visiting the cemetery eight months after her death that her name was Florindo Budworth. Regardless, her true name remains unknown. In addition to withholding her real name, Budwin may have also decided against disclosing her gender to her captors for safety reasons. Female soldiers who fell into the hands of the enemy were placed in a precarious situation where they were forced to make a difficult decision. A revelation may indeed lead to freedom courtesy of sympathetic and compassionate captors. But then again, it may also bring unwanted advances and violence. It was a risky venture that Florena obviously chose not to take, and the decision ultimately proved fatal. That was not the case with other women soldiers confined at Andersonville. Not only did Corporal Elliott bear witness to Florena Budwin’s incarceration, he also stated that there was another woman soldier imprisoned in Andersonville. However, the only information he gave about her was that Confederates sent this anonymous woman north after she admitted her ruse.12 There may have been other women who chose the same path. Andersonville prisoner Private John Worrell Northrop of the 76th New York Infantry noted in his diary that friends pointed out “two sprightly persons” to him in June 1864. “Many times after I saw them, always together, always by themselves,” he recalled. “They looked like beardless boys, feminine of stature and of features, with an air of shyness.” Northrop noted that the identities of these mysterious individuals were never confirmed, but many believed them to be women based on their mannerisms, which earned the pair the moniker of “camp angels.” Prisoners last saw the two individuals passing through the south gate one evening at sunset. Northrop said nobody knew why they left, the means for their departure, or their

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destination. Yet, their exodus from Andersonville strengthened the speculation that the two were women who had just walked free from prison after revealing their identities to the guards.13 At least one woman soldier rests at Andersonville National Cemetery. In 1867, Mary A. Shearman wrote about a particularly interesting grave she saw during a visit. The wooden headboard read “Unknown Lady” and displayed the date of her death as April 6, 1864. Shearman made inquiries about the soldier’s grave and learned about a report that claimed that the anonymous woman was an officer’s wife and that her identity remained undetected until death. However, that source likely confused her with Florena Budwin. Another account of this woman mentions that a prisoner serving on a burial detail discovered her on April 6, 1864, after stripping the body of clothing prior to placing her in the burial trench, a common practice that ensured needy prisoners would receive useful items that the dead would no longer require.14 While Shearman failed to mention the location of the grave of the “Unknown Lady,” a newspaper correspondent who visited the cemetery the following year in 1868, noted that it was at the end of a row. According to Andersonville historian, Kevin Frye, the only grave situated at the end of a row that holds an unknown soldier is grave 101. The problem is that records show that the approximate date of death for that individual is March 22, 1864. There is no unit listed or cause of death. The burial register merely mentions that the soldier died in camp as opposed to in the prison hospital.15 Further research of the burial register reveals that the soldier buried in grave 13,706 is an “Unknown Lady” and that she “died as a soldier” on April 6, 1864, the same date Shearman noted on the headboard during her visit and the same date that the soldier buried the dead woman prisoner. Yet the database maintained by the Andersonville National Historic Site does not list a date of death for the individual in this grave. Nor does it list the individual as a soldier, but as a citizen. While there were a few female civilians captured with their husbands and held briefly with them as prisoners at Andersonville, there are no reports of any of them perishing during their incarceration. Furthermore, the headstone denotes the grave as that of an “Unknown US Soldier,” not a citizen. The label “Unknown Lady” no longer appears. When the headboards were replaced in 1878, it was changed to “Unknown US Soldier.”

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The problem with grave 13,706 is that it is not at the end of a row as described by the newspaper correspondent. Furthermore, it is located in a group of post-war reinterments of soldiers originally buried at other locations in Georgia and northern Florida, which does not line up with the account of the prisoner at Andersonville discovering the dead woman prior to placing her in the burial trench. The discrepancies are puzzling. Yet documentation reveals that there is indeed at least one woman soldier buried at Andersonville National Cemetery, perhaps two. Yankee women soldiers were not the only ones who languished in infamous prison camps. Among the destitute at the hellhole known as Point Lookout, Maryland was Jane Perkins. When the Federals took her, she was serving with a Confederate artillery unit during the North Anna Campaign. Though most newspaper articles claim that Federals captured her while at a cannon, she told a reporter for the Boston Traveler (December 27, 1864) that she was taken while fetching water from a spring. Regardless, Jane Perkins became a prisoner of war. And like so many of her Confederate comrades, she could not have imagined the suffering she would ultimately have to endure when she decided to leave her teaching position in Pittsylvania County, Virginia at the outbreak of the war to fight for the South. Even though the twenty-two-year-old resided for a time in Massachusetts years before the war, she was fiercely loyal to the Confederacy and prepared to die for it. This is best evidenced when she petitioned both governments in the press to allow her and Dr. Mary Edwards Walker to settle the country’s differences in mortal combat. Perkins claimed to have met the woman doctor just two months prior when the latter was serving as a contract surgeon with the 52nd Ohio Infantry. Walker was captured as a spy, and Jane claimed in an article appearing in the Pittsburgh Gazette on June 10, 1864, that she was one of the guards who escorted her to prison in Richmond. But now the tables were turned, and it was Perkins who was a prisoner. Described by Federal engineer Washington Roebling as “independent and saucy,” the feisty Rebel did not readily submit to her captors. Indeed, Perkins cursed the Yankees most fervently when they brought her to White House Landing on June 2, 1864. Military officials then transferred Jane and many of her fellow prisoners captured during the Overland Campaign to Point Lookout, where they arrived on June 8, 1864. There, Jane boldly declared to provost marshal Major A. G. Brady that she could

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kill a Yankee as adeptly as any man. In a display of compassion, Brady overlooked her attitude and set up a small tent for her six hundred feet from the other prisoners. Nevertheless, Perkins still had to endure the same horrid conditions as her male comrades. She remained in the squalor until Dr. C. T. Alexander, who was there inspecting the sanitary conditions of the prison, suggested that military officials remove her.16 On July 12, 1864, Federals transferred Jane Perkins to Old Capitol Prison in Washington, DC, where she stayed until October. The next stop on her tour of prisons was, ironically, located in Massachusetts, which was where she initially settled after arriving from Ireland, before relocating to Virginia. On October 17, Perkins was confined in the House of Correction, a facility in Fitchburg used to hold particularly disagreeable women. The saucy Rebel refused to go quietly, forcing her captors to drag her to her cell. Once there, she promptly informed her guard that “not he or any other damn Yankee was [going to be] able to put irons on her.” But her threats were for naught as she was indeed handcuffed and placed in solitary confinement for three days. When she returned to her cell, she destroyed it, which earned her another stay in solitary confinement for three additional days. In the end, Jane’s belligerency cost her physically as she became paralyzed on her right side according to a fellow prisoner. Perkins herself said that a guard shot her in the arm prior to her arrival at Fitchburg. Though she did not detail the events that led to her injury, her hot mouth may well have served as a catalyst. In the end, the defiant Rebel and her weary Yankee captors alike survived her stay in Fitchburg. Undoubtedly, everybody was relieved when she boarded the train in March 1865, bound for Fortress Monroe, where she was ultimately exchanged.17 By that point, Jane Perkins had suffered incarceration for a total of ten months. When she passed beyond the prison gates for good, she left for parts unknown and disappeared from history. Though worse for the wear, Perkins survived her prison experience. The same cannot be said of one of her Confederate countrywomen confined in Illinois. What was to become the military prison at Alton began as a state penitentiary in 1833. However, social reformer Dorothea Dix declared the facility unfit to house inmates because of its dirt floors and unsanitary conditions. It closed in 1860, but reopened two years later as a military prison. And it is highly doubtful that officials had improved the horrid conditions that led to the initial closure of the facility. Poor

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living conditions and malnutrition, combined with a harsh environment, led to fatal diseases. The woman soldier confined there found herself in a challenging situation she would not escape. It is unknown when she perished, but her story became sensational among Alton’s citizens. The meager details of her account only came to light in the press when the obituary of the man who buried her appeared in the newspapers in 1904. Nothing is known about her past, where she came from, her unit, her name, or the unfortunate series of events that led to her confinement in a four-foot by seven-foot prison cell. The cause of her demise is also a mystery, though whatever mortal event befell her ultimately led to her discovery. It was Michael Gleason who laid her to rest and marked her grave with a wooden stake. According to the Alton Evening Telegraph of August 2, 1904, the Irishman wanted to bury her in the Catholic cemetery because “she was of the sex as his mother [and] she deserved to be buried in consecrated ground.” However, in an article appearing in the McHenry Plain Dealer on August 11, 1904, Captain Henry W. Hart, who was contracted to bury the Confederate dead at Alton, denied him, and so Gleason buried her in the Confederate cemetery with the other soldiers. He continued to visit and maintain her grave until he and his wife moved to St. Louis in the 1890s. He even brought children from the area with him to place flowers upon the site where he had laid her to rest. After the Gleasons relocated, the cemetery fell into disrepair over time and even served as a cow pasture for a while. The wooden stakes deteriorated, along with the identities of the soldiers buried underneath. Several months before Mike Gleason’s death, the people of Alton expressed a desire to have him return in order that he could show them the woman soldier’s grave so that they could continue to care for it. However, he passed away first, taking the location of her grave to his. Subsequent attempts to identify this female soldier and mark her grave resulted in a garbled mess that remains tangled to this day. In 1909, the Cincinnati Enquirer of August 14 revived the story of the woman soldier when an article announced that a chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy from Alton was seeking her grave. In a record book they were using that contained the names of the prisoners who died there included a woman named Barbara Ann Dunevant. So the members of the UDC assumed she must be the one whom they sought. However, this was a mistake. Dunevant was a twenty-five-year-old Indiana native living in

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Arkansas when Federals arrested and convicted her in a court martial trial for smuggling revolvers across Union lines in Memphis.18 Officials sent her to Alton, where she contracted small pox, which was raging through the prison. As a result, she was banished to an island in the Mississippi River where infected prisoners were quarantined. There, Dunevant died on September 28, 1863, and was buried in a graveyard along with others who suffered the same fate. All of the graves, including Dunevant’s, disappeared in 1865 when the river flooded what became known as Small Pox Island. Dunevant was a civilian and therefore not the woman soldier who died. Officials knew her name, when she died, how she died, and where she died. She is well documented in Alton’s records as a civilian. On the other hand, the list that the Daughters of the Confederacy used perhaps contained mere names with no details to go with them. Their misidentification as reported in the press is nevertheless the reason contemporary and current researchers figuratively promoted Dunevant from civilian to soldier. Even a Confederate prisoner of war, Captain Thomas Pinckney of the 4th South Carolina Cavalry, became guilty of advancing the false narrative, when he later suspected that the woman soldier with whom he had been incarcerated was Dunevant. He admitted in his memoirs, My Reminiscences of the War, that he never learned the female prisoner’s identity. But when he saw the 1909 newspaper article about Dunevant, he assumed she was his fellow POW. However, that was a mistake. Pinckney was captured at the Battle of Haw’s Shop, or Enon Church, and spent time at Point Lookout before transferring to Fort Deleware and then to Hilton Head before being exchanged at Fort Pulaski, Georgia. He never spent time in Alton, and Dunevant never spent time in any of the prisons where Pinckney was confined. There was indeed a woman soldier imprisoned at Point Lookout the same time as Pinckney, and that was the aforementioned Jane Perkins. So it was Perkins and not Dunevant who was Pinckney’s fellow prisoner of war. There was at least one more woman who died while imprisoned at Alton. Like Dunvenat, she was a civilian and smuggler. Mrs. W. F. Reynolds of Mobile was arrested on August 18, 1864, for attempting to carry quinine through the lines at Vicksburg and was sent to the military prison in Alton, where she died of unknown causes on March 18, 1865. Gravediggers interred her in the Catholic burial ground, even though male civilian prisoners were buried in the Confederate cemetery along with

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the soldiers.18 It is unknown who buried her, but if it was Gleason, then it is curious that Hart allowed him to bury this woman in the Catholic cemetery and not the soldier woman. Perhaps the military status was the difference. Perhaps Hart finally acquiesced to Gleason’s vehement protests at potentially having to bury two women in the Confederate cemetery. Equally curious is why the UDC suspected Dunevant to be the woman soldier and not Reynolds. The reason is likely that the list of names they used covered the years 1862 and 1863 only. Reynolds died in 1865, so her name was not present. She was not the woman soldier anyway because, as with Dunevant, documents clearly show that officials were aware that she was a female civilian when she arrived at Alton. This is not the case with the woman soldier, whose sex was not discovered until she died. In summary, there were three women who died while incarcerated at Alton. Barbara Ann Dunevant and Mrs. W. F. Reynolds were civilians. Reynolds is buried in a Catholic cemetery, while Dunevant’s grave is under Alton Lake, which was created by the construction of a dam there in 1935. The other woman was an unknown soldier buried by Michael Gleason in the Confederate cemetery located in North Alton. In 1911, the graves there were graded over and leveled. Grass grew over the site and now conceals the final resting place of over a thousand Confederate soldiers, including one woman, who died while imprisoned at Alton.20

Chapter 3 PAYING THE PRICE

Women Soldiers Killed and Wounded in Action “She sleeps upon her field of fame.” Pvt. Henry Clinton Parkhurst, 16th Iowa Infantry

Not only did women soldiers languish and die within prison walls, they also suffered and perished on battlefields. From the opening major engagement of the war, soldiers discovered women among the dead. When the 21st Georgia Infantry was ordered to Manassas Junction following the first battle that occurred there, a comrade pointed out to Private M. F. Amos the grave of a Federal woman soldier who had been killed in the engagement. On September 4, 1861, he noted in a letter to his wife, “There were a great many fanatic women in the Yankee army, some of whom were killed.” He then shared a grisly detail about the grave of one of them, that “her foot was sticking out of the ground.”1 Women serving in the western theater shared a similar fate. In an article appearing in the Milwaukee Sentinel on December 19, 1897, reporter J. P. Roe noted a story Father Abram Ryan shared with him while the “Poet-Priest of the Confederacy” was visiting Milwaukee in 1883. It was an account of a woman discovered among the wounded after an unnamed battle. She had been serving with Major General Patrick Cleburne’s division of General Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee. Since Cleburne assumed command of his division in December 1862, with Bragg remaining commander of the Army of Tennessee until the conclusion of the Chattanooga Campaign in late 1863, it is reasonable to surmise that this female 38

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combatant was likely wounded during the Battle of Stones River, the Tullahoma Campaign, Chickamauga, or the Chattanooga Campaign. If Ryan’s memory had been faulty and the woman was serving with Cleburne when he was still a brigade commander, she could have been wounded at Perryville. If that were the case, that means that this woman may very well have been Mary Ann Clark who sources say served in Bragg’s command and was wounded at Perryville. Most say she was struck down at Richmond, Kentucky. However, Bragg was not at Richmond, though Cleburne commanded a small division there that comprised two brigades. It appears that this woman was fortunate to have escaped with her life. Such is not the case with one of her Confederate female comrades. An Illinois soldier who was a member of a burial detail wrote about finding the Southern woman shot through the head and killed during the Battle of Shiloh. Part of his letter appearing in the Bloomington Weekly Pantagraph on May 7th, 1862, noted that she appeared to have been an officer. The Federals likely buried her in a mass grave with her male comrades. Later that year, the discovery of a Confederate woman soldier killed in the cornfield at Antietam proved to be a particularly moving occurrence for Private Mark Nickerson of the 10th Massachusetts. “Nothing in my experience up to that time affected me as did that incident,” he wrote. His comrades wrapped her in a blanket before interring her. They marked her grave with a headboard made from a cracker box, which deteriorated over time as did the location of her final resting place.2 Back in the western theater five months later, in an effort to interrupt Federal shipping up the Cumberland River, Major General Joe Wheeler attacked the Federal garrison at Dover, Tennessee, with a cavalry brigade consisting of the commands of Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest and Major General John A. Wharton. What came to be known as the Second Battle of Fort Donelson proved to be a costly venture for the Confederates who suffered a 25 percent casualty rate. Among the dead and wounded troopers lying freezing around the fort the night of February 3, 1863, was an anonymous woman who had perished. If she had served with Forrest, she likely lost her life during a particularly reckless charge that Union artillery blew apart with double-shotted heavy siege guns. The rugged and stubborn cavalry commander had vehemently protested attacking the garrison to begin with and angrily lamented, “[N]othing’ll bring back my brave men.” It was soldiers of the 83rd Illinois Infantry

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detailed to bury the dead at Dover who noticed that one of those brave men was rather fair. Upon inspecting the body, they discovered the soldier to be a woman, though her gender failed to afford her corpse special treatment. One nonchalant soldier reported with callous indifference, “She was tumbled in [the burial trench] . . . and covered with dirt.”3 The pivotal Battle of Gettysburg proved to be a bane to not only the Confederacy, but also to at least three Southern women. One lost her leg, another fell severely wounded, and a third forfeited her life on the blood-soaked battlefield there. While recovering in a hospital in Chester, Pennsylvania, Private Thomas Read of the 5th Michigan Infantry penned a letter to his parents in which he noted that there was a “female secesh” with them and that the doctors “found her out” in the process of amputating her leg. Read had not personally seen her but heard that she was “very good looking” and expressed his wishes for a speedy recovery for her.4 Meanwhile, Private Garrett Deacon of the 12th New Jersey Infantry of the II Corps mentioned in a letter to a friend that two women fell during Pickett’s charge, one wounded and the other killed. The account of the one who was wounded appears in a subsequent chapter. As for the one who was killed, a Federal burial detail discovered her secret before they interred her, according to Deacon, who added that doctors had confirmed her sex. The Jerseyman further noted that “there was one of us a bout there got wonded That was Emesson Middlton got a Slt wond in the leg by a Shell.” Not only is it challenging to decipher Deacon’s letters, which are filled with grammatical errors and creative spellings while devoid of punctuation, but it is likewise difficult to grasp his sense of space and distance. A clue that may help to determine the general location of the woman’s death during Pickett’s charge lies with Deacon’s statement that Emesson Middlton was wounded “a bout there.” The connotation of the phrase renders it quite vague and subjective but implies that she died somewhere in the general vicinity of the interior angle because Emesson Middlton, who was actually Emerson Middleton of Company C of the 12th New Jersey, had been attached to Battery A of the 1st Rhode Island Light Artillery. And it was while serving in this capacity when he was wounded in the leg by a shell. This unit, also called Arnold’s Battery for Captain William A. Arnold, occupied a position located at the extreme left of the second brigade, third division behind the angle. And it was “a bout there” where the female combatant lost her life.

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While it proves to be a difficult task to pinpoint the precise location of this woman’s death, it is equally challenging to identify her regiment. However, there is a good chance she was either an Alabamian or Tennessean of Colonel Birkett D. Fry’s brigade or a North Carolinian with either Colonel James K. Marshall’s brigade or that of Colonel William L. J. Lowrance.5 Researchers have suggested that this slain female combatant may have been the dead Confederate woman who Brigadier General William Hays documented in a burial report. At the bottom, he noted, “One female (private), in rebel uniform,” thereby rendering her a footnote to history. Hays had temporarily assumed command of the II Corps, of which Arnold’s Battery and the 12th New Jersey were a part, after Major General Winfield Scott Hancock fell wounded during the third day’s assault. So the theory that the woman of Hays’s report and the one in Deacon’s letter are the same is feasible. But because the report covered the days from July 2–5, it is impossible to say with absolute certainty when the woman mentioned in the report died. Nor did Hays specify where she fell on the battlefield. However, this woman likely was the same one Deacon cited as having perished during Pickett’s charge because the only other action that the II Corps saw was combat at the Wheatfield and Bliss farm. Confederates pressed the Federals in both locations which resulted in the elements of the corps returning to their original position on Cemetery Ridge, which was the ground they would occupy at the time of Pickett’s charge the following day. And they likely did not have time to bury the dead before departing their respective sectors and rejoining the corps stationed on the ridge. So even though the report included July 2, the II Corps may not have actually sent out any burial details on that day, leaving it highly likely that the woman of Hays’s burial report perished during Pickett’s charge on July 3 and that she was the same woman killed “a bout there” in the vicinity of Arnold’s Battery near the inner angle as documented by Private Garrett Deacon in his letter to his friend.6 Some researchers have confused or merged the account of this dead woman discovered by the burial detail with a fictional story featuring a Virginia woman serving with her husband, both of whom tragically cut down at the stone wall during Pickett’s charge. This tale originates from the pen of a novelist named Martha Caroline Keller who may have based her story on the female discovered by the burial detail and denoted by

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Hays in his report. Keller’s fictional account was initially published as “The Hero of Pickett’s Old Brigade” in an 1893 edition of Confederate Veteran. The same story appeared in subsequent publications as “The Hero of Pickett’s Division” in Confederate War Journal in 1894 and “Confederate Girl Wife Who Fell at Gettysburg” in Camp Fires of the Confederacy in 1898.7 To summarize, there was one confirmed woman who died at Gettysburg during Pickett’s charge in the general vicinity of Arnold’s Battery near the interior angle, but it is unknown whether the burial detail discovered her around the stone wall or further out in the field. And this woman would have likely been either an Alabamian, Tennessean, or a North Carolinian. The year after Gettysburg, Grant initiated an offensive that would place pressure on the Confederates in as many places as possible. On May 5, 1864, the Overland Campaign commenced when the Federals struck General Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia at the Wilderness, resulting in a staggering amount of casualties. One of the wounded soldiers from that battle who nurse Margaret Hamilton helped tend at the Satterlee US Military Hospital in Philadelphia was a female lieutenant. The teenager had suffered a gunshot wound to her shoulder. At the hospital, her fellow male soldiers with whom she served testified to her bravery.8 Another part of the Federal offensive involved three brigades under Brigadier General George Crook advancing to destroy the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad. Confederate forces commanded by Brigadier General Albert G. Jenkins attempted to stop them at Cloyd’s Mountain located in Pulaski County, Virginia. The ensuing clash on May 9, 1864, though small, saw savage hand-to-hand fighting, resulting in some of the highest casualty rates of the war. Among the dead was Jenkins who bled to death at a Federal hospital following the amputation of his arm. The chain of command then fell to Colonel John McCausland, who withdrew the overwhelmed Confederates to Central Depot in a last desperate attempt to save the railroad bridge over the New River. An artillery duel commenced the following morning. Amidst the bursting shells, a Federal skirmish line was formed by the river bank to provide cover for the troops firing the bridge while the remainder of the 1st brigade commanded by Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes of the 23rd Ohio Infantry remained under cover in a wooded area. When the future US president ordered his men to lie down

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for their safety amidst the chaos, he never thought one of them would sass him. “Why don’t you get off that horse and hide, too?” Stunned, Hayes repeated his order. Again, the brazen soldier issued a saucy reply, “I’ll get down when you do.” Posterity will never know the undoubtedly heated exchange that would have followed because at that time, an exploding shell wounded the insubordinate youngster “fatally and shockingly,” according to Hayes. On June 9, 1864, Joseph T. Webb, surgeon of the 23rd Ohio and Hayes’s brother-in-law, described the scene in a letter to his brother. “Not far from me was what I supposed to be a young boy, a shell burst by his side killing him instantly. I went up to him, and found instead of a young boy, a woman, who had been with the 5th [West] Va Cavalry for some time; she was known to but a very few.”9 Captain Russell Hastings, who was serving with Hayes and Webb in the 23rd Ohio Infantry, chronicled the woman’s death and discovery in his memoirs, “A soldier in a West Virginia Regiment received a severe wound in the shoulder from a piece of shell. On our surgeon (Dr. Webb) dressing the wound, he found the soldier to be a woman.” Interestingly, he concluded with, “Such cases were not infrequent in our army.” Private James J. Wood of the 34th Ohio Infantry also recorded the incident in his diary and noted, “She fought bravely in battle yesterday.”10 Indeed, she was among the dismounted troopers who engaged McCausland’s command during the race to New River Bridge. Arriving from Dublin to protect the Confederate retreat was John Hunt Morgan’s cavalry brigade. One of the officers in the unit was Captain Christopher S. Cleburne who lost his life that day, six months before his older brother, Patrick, perished at the Battle of Franklin. Efforts to identify this woman have been fruitless. Hayes simply observed that she was a dismounted trooper, which would indicate she was with a West Virginia regiment since the only cavalry units with Hayes’s 1st brigade were the 5th and 7th West Virginia. Hastings corroborated the unit as being a West Virginia regiment. Only Webb specified that her unit was the 5th West Virginia Cavalry. However, Private John Holliday of the 91st Ohio Infantry with the 2nd brigade recorded an incident in his journal that may suggest she was with the 7th West Virginia Cavalry instead. When chronicling the action at the bridge, he wrote, “They kept up a heavy fire cutting off limbs of trees around us. . . . [A] shell striking near by killed two of the 7th [West] Va Cavalry one of them a mere boy the

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shell striking him on the Breast tore him almost in atoms.”11 Was this boy actually the woman of whose gender Holliday was unaware? Dr. Webb indicated that the woman’s wound was to the shoulder while Holliday said the boy he saw was hit in the breast. Yet the same general proximity is suggestive and may indicate that Holliday witnessed the death of the woman as described by Hayes, Webb, Hastings, and Wood. A check of both rosters yielded no definitive results. However, multiple accounts, including that of a future US president, corroborate this incident and chronicle the gruesome and tragic death of an unknown woman soldier at New River Bridge on May 10, 1864. Ironically, the Federal woman who fought in this small, obscure battle was not the only one. On the Confederate side were Mary and Mollie Bell, who were serving with the 36th Virginia Infantry. Unlike their Union counterpart, the two relatives survived the engagement only to be discovered following the Battle of Cedar Creek that October after an officer in whom they confided their secret betrayed them. As a result, Lieutenant General Jubal Early condemned them as prostitutes and imprisoned them in Castle Thunder in Richmond, though their male comrades vouched for their ability as soldiers and devotion to duty. They remained confined for several weeks after which time they were sent home still wearing their uniforms.12 Another component of the Federal’s 1864 spring offensive involved the Atlanta Campaign, which proved to be an especially murderous affair for women soldiers. A Federal woman fell mortally wounded with a gunshot to the head on May 14th, 1864, during the first day’s fighting at Resaca. Before she lost her life in Georgia, she was involved in several hard-fought battles in Mississippi. Her chronicle appears in subsequent chapters. Several weeks later, Sergeant Robert G. Ardrey of the 111th Illinois Infantry wrote his father on June 3, 1864, about ferocious Confederate women who met a violent end during the Battle of Dallas: They fought like demons, and we cut them down like dogs. . . . I saw 3 or 4 rebel women soldiers in the heap of bodies. All had been shot down during the final rebel charge upon our works. One secesh woman charged to within several rods of our works waving the traitor flag and screaming vulgarities. She was shot 3 times but still on she came. She was finally killed by 2 shots fired almost

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simultaneously by our boys. Another she devil shot her way to our breastworks with 2 large revolvers dealing death to all in her path. She was shot several times with no apparent effect. When she ran out of ammunition she pulled out the largest pig sticker I ever seen. It must have been 18 inches in the blade. When the corporal tried to shoot her she kicked him in the face mashing it quite severely. Then she stabbed 3 boys and was about to decapitate a 4th when the lieutenant killed her. Without doubt this gal inflicted more damage to our line than any other reb. If Gen. Lee were to field a brigade of such fighters, I think that the Union prospects would be very gloomy indeed for it would be hard to equal their ferocity and pluck.13 During the engagement, the 111th Illinois of Brigadier General Giles A. Smith’s brigade, Brigadier General Morgan L. Smith’s division faced either Brigadier General Joseph H. Lewis’s Kentucky Orphan Brigade or Brigadier General Jesse J. Finley’s Florida Brigade of Major General William B. Bate’s division. Both brigades failed to receive word that the attack had been called off and consequently made unsupported frontal assaults of an entrenched foe that resulted in a high number of casualties in a relatively short period of time. Regardless which brigade these women belonged to, the distinct possibility exists that they served in Mississippi. The Kentucky Orphan Brigade manned defensive positions at Vicksburg during the summer of 1862, while the Floridians participated in the siege of Jackson. Unfortunately, little is known about these women, and it is impossible to determine when and where they enlisted and, therefore, to confirm their service in Mississippi. Two months after the Battle of Dallas, President Jefferson Davis replaced General Joseph E. Johnston with Lieutenant General John Bell Hood in an effort to garner momentum during the campaign. Hood was to take the fight to the Federals in front of Atlanta, an endeavor for which he wasted no time. Three days after assuming command of the Army of Tennessee, the aggressive general attacked the Army of the Cumberland at Peach Tree Creek on July 20, 1864. Following a series of uncoordinated, bloody charges that resulted in approximately twenty-five hundred casualties, Hood finally called off the assault several hours later and left

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the field to the Federals, along with many of the Confederate dead and wounded. Among those abandoned were several women, whom, according to James L. Dunn, surgeon with the 109th Pennsylvania Infantry of Brigadier General John W. Geary’s division, Federal medical personnel picked up and treated after the battle. While Dunn was not precise in his tally of the women, another Pennsylvanian serving in Geary’s division, Corporal Frederick N. Kollock of the 29th Infantry, noted in his diary that “among the prisoners…were two females in uniform.” It is unknown whether these two women were among those Dunn referenced. But they were likely Alabamians or Mississippians because Kollock’s regiment was part of Colonel David Ireland’s brigade and faced Colonel Edward A. O’Neal’s brigade, which was made up of Alabamians in addition to the 37th Mississippi. Meanwhile, Private Charles B. Stiles of the 36th Illinois Infantry of Brigadier General John Newton’s division detailed in his diary that “seven dead females and one wounded were found in rebel uniforms.” Remarkably, these women soldiers were not the only uncommon Confederates who became casualties at Peach Tree Creek. According to Stiles, the Federals also discovered a male mulatto among the injured prisoners.14 Stiles did not specify where on the battlefield the women were found, but if men of his division discovered them, then they were likely members of Brigadier General William H. T. Walker’s division, which was made up of mostly Georgians with a couple of South Carolina units, in addition to the 5th and 8th Mississippi Infantry Regiments. This opens up the possibility that some of those eight to whom Stiles referred were women from the Magnolia State. Private Stiles’s count brings the total of women soldiers killed or wounded at Peach Tree Creek to approximately ten, rendering it the bloodiest battle of the war for them. Among this tally was a female fighter who lost a foot there.15 She was one of two Mississippi women who fell severely wounded that day while serving with Brigadier General Winfield Scott Featherston. The details of their accounts appear in a later chapter. This woman was not the only one who sacrificed a limb for the Confederate cause during the battles for Atlanta. Among the prisoners who fell into Yankee hands in the fighting the day after Peach Tree Creek was a woman whom a Federal surgeon discovered when he amputated her leg. The Union soldier, whose account appeared in Schenectady Evening

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Star and Times on August 17, 1864, offered an explanation of how she was able to pass undetected. “So many tender youths have been captured by us since the commencement of the campaign that but little attention was given her features.” Like her sister soldiers, this woman appeared to be a young, beardless boy, which helped her blend in with all of the others and successfully maintain her ruse. Had she not been severely wounded, she very well could have served throughout the remainder of the war without detection. Yet, the wound claimed not only her secret identity and her leg, but perhaps her life as well. Unable to hold Atlanta, the Confederates abandoned it to the Federals in September 1864. However, Hood continued to lurk in the area and decided to make a desperate gamble to draw Major General William T. Sherman out of the city by attacking his supply lines. Historians have referred to the ensuing Battle of Allatoona Pass as a footnote to the Atlanta Campaign and an introduction to Hood’s ill-fated Franklin-Nashville Campaign. Fought on October 5, 1864, it was a brutal engagement where three color bearers of the 29th North Carolina Infantry fell within forty feet of each other. A fellow Tar Heel who served with those lost souls was an unknown female fighter who sacrificed her life in a horrifying and gruesome manner. Because of the graphic nature of her injuries described by the men who found her, what likely happened is that she was engaged in a perilous struggle with a Yankee who ultimately overpowered her and beat her to death during the vicious hand-to-hand fighting that occurred around Rowett’s Redoubt. Holding his rifle on high, he rotated at the waist and then viciously swung the weapon towards his foe. Bones made a sickening crack upon contact as he clubbed her in the face again. . . . and again . . . and again until her visage was beyond recognition, her life pounded away along with her facial features. Her gender was identified only when a man serving on a burial detail reached in her jacket and grabbed something other than what he thought was a money belt around her chest. It turned out to be the binding she used to flatten her breasts as a part of her disguise as a man. In obvious disbelief at what he had just observed, a nearby sergeant came over, knelt beside the faceless corpse, and opened the trousers. The shocking sight left little doubt as to her truth. News quickly spread, attracting several other soldiers who stood gawking at the scene, which angered the sergeant. Rising, he ordered that she be placed in the burial trench with her male comrades.16 If not for

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the greedy soldier of the burial detail, she would have taken her secret with her to the grave, giving rise to the question of how many women soldiers managed to escape detection, their stories of sacrifice buried in the ground, lost to history. As evidenced by these accounts, women soldiers were discovered dead upon the battlefield throughout its four murderous years. Indeed, soldiers continued to discover their lifeless bodies upon the war-torn fields until the very end. “The remains of a woman in Confederate uniform were found between the lines near the Appomattox River,” Gilbert Thompson, a Federal engineer, wrote in his journal.17 Tragically, this female fighter perished just one day before the cessation of hostilities in Virginia. This soldier woman, like others found deceased upon the battlefield, appeared to have maintained their secret up until death. There were some female bodies, however, that managed to elude the detection of hasty burial details, their identities revealed only when gravediggers exhumed them for reburial in national cemeteries after the war. On June 14, 1865, the Herald and Torch Light from Hagerstown, Maryland, reported the case of a Federal woman discovered among the dead of Antietam who were reinterred in the national cemetery. The following year, laborers discovered women at Resaca and the Crater. Both had been shot in the head. According to an article appearing in the Daily Cleveland Herald on June 12, 1866, the latter woman was in an “excellent state of preservation,” her features “pallid with the hue of death revealed the delicate cast of her woman’s face, and her hair, though cut short, possessed a gloss and softness.” Gravediggers reinterred them at Chattanooga National Cemetery and Poplar Grove National Cemetery, respectively. While these women were discovered shortly after the war, at least one was unearthed in the twentieth century. On February 6, 1934, while working in his garden that bordered the Shiloh battlefield, Mancil Milligan unearthed nine bodies of Federal soldiers interred in a mass grave, along with bits of uniform, gear, and buttons. Milligan ended up keeping some of the artifacts and passing them on to his son, Mancil Milligan Jr., who remembers his father telling him about archaeologists with the Smithsonian Institution, who were in the area excavating Indian mounds, coming to investigate the scene. Milligan told his son that their study revealed that one of the bodies was that of a woman. In the grave was a minié ball located near her skeleton that likely killed her. Upon the completion of

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the excavation, laborers reinterred all nine in section R, grave 3633, in Shiloh National Cemetery.18 For the women soldiers who were fortunate enough to escape the killing fields of the Civil War, some returned home in the same damaged condition as their male comrades. These female fighters suffered from psychological trauma, broken bodies, and missing limbs, their quality of life undoubtedly diminished from their disfigurement. Some made the ultimate sacrifice and rest next to the men with whom they served. The headstones of these women warriors often reflect their male aliases only. Some lie in graves marked “unknown.” And others were tossed in mass burial trenches with their male counterparts. So many soldiers, both men and women, lost not only their lives but also their identities to history. This is the true epitome of the Civil War tragedy. And Mississippi was center stage.

Chapter 4 MISSISSIPPI’S WOMEN SOLDIERS

“To Arms, Brave Girls!” Times Picayune (New Orleans), March 26, 1862

From the very beginning when events started to spiral out of control and seal the fate of the country, Mississippi women pledged to defend their state. Before the shelling of Fort Sumter, a group of women in Chickasaw County began to drill “in the event that the men are called into service, to protect their homes and families during their absence.” There was a similar company of women in Choctaw County, whose members possessed a prowess with a rifle that, according to a newspaper reporter, was comparable to that of famed frontiersman Daniel Boone.1 Even though it appears that these female sharpshooters were adequately prepared for the inevitable conflict, it is unknown whether they ever had to bring their martial proficiencies to bear during the war. Undoubtedly, the skills these women learned while their men were away proved to be invaluable. Out of 124 members, virtually all related by blood or marriage, who marched away with the Choctaw Rebels, Company E of the 31st Mississippi Infantry, only twenty were left to participate in the Battle of Peach Tree Creek in 1864. After an ill-fated charge during the engagement, only four remained.2 The destruction of this company from Choctaw County unexpectedly thrust a vast majority of the Mississippi women who made up the home guard unit into a household leadership role. They were now defenders of hearth and home as well as breadwinners for their families. On March 26, 1862, the New Orleans Times Picayune reported that a company of “perfectly drilled” female artillerists from Mississippi 50

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The all-female home guard units in Mississippi may have looked like this one referenced as the White Mountain Rangers from New Hampshire. Photographed by Alexander Gardner. Library of Congress, LC-DIG-stereo-1s02991.

announced they would be coming to the Crescent City in order to garrison one of the forts in the area so that the current defenders could then be free to answer General P. G. T. Beauregard’s call for ninety-day volunteers. The women were inspired by Fannie Bliss’s plea appearing in the Memphis Avalanche. As “Coloneless commanding the 1st Tennessee Regiment Female Volunteers,” Bliss called for women to form a regiment in order to protect “our brave young knights of the quill, yard stick, and also our young cashiers” because it was “very necessary that the dry goods establishments should have stout, healthy and brave young men to handle the yard stick, and do various other hazardous and dangerous duties.” The mocking tone of Coloneless Bliss reveals that her intent was undoubtedly to shame the men of Memphis into enlisting as opposed to recruiting an actual regiment of women. Amusingly, Mississippi’s female artillerists apparently failed to recognize the witty banter for what it was and took the call for female recruits in earnest.

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Beyond serving in female home guard units, Mississippi women enlisted from the beginning in volunteer regiments alongside men. On August 5, 1861, Corinth resident Walter Overton noted in his diary that an unnamed unit there “had two women with them dressed in men’s clothing, going Soldiering.”3 The fact that Overton was able to recognize these individuals as women suggests that either Overton was more perceptive than the male soldiers in the unit, or their disguises were poor and that officials were aware there were women soldiers in the regiment but allowed them to serve despite their gender. Perhaps they were well disguised but someone within the regiment managed to learn their secret by some means and pointed them out to Overton. Another option would be that these women were the aforementioned vivandières or cantinères, who nurse Mary Livermore referred to as “half-soldier heroines.” Since this post had a French origin, most of these women were attached to Zouave regiments. They wore quasi-military uniforms consisting of a jacket that looked similar to the men’s in addition to a skirt worn over a pair of trousers. Whether this type of clothing could be considered “men’s clothes” as described by Overton is debatable. So the question remains how exactly he was aware that there were women in the unnamed regiment he saw in Corinth. Regardless of why the women were there, they were evidently serving in some capacity in the unit, which was apparently quite raucous. The male soldiers were “a bad set” according to Overton. “I saw one ring fight and several other miner fisticuffs,” he observed. “I expected to see some of them killed.” The fate of these women after leaving for Memphis with their rowdy regiment is unknown. On April 18, 1862, a Natchez woman collected an enlistment bounty and mustered in to Captain Edward Lynn’s squad, which would eventually become attached to Miles’ Legion as Company G. For several weeks, “William Bradley” drilled with her Confederate male comrades in the Bluff City. But when marching with the unit up Main Street one day, she struggled to keep in step, drawing the ire of Sergeant Patrick Burns. As one passerby watched the sergeant berate the young recruit opposite James Grillo’s store near the present-day intersection of Main and Commerce Streets, he squinted at the scene and realized that he recognized the youngster. Apparently, Private Bradley marched to the beat of a different drum in more ways than one. In disbelief, the spectator immediately

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Kady Brownell, who served as a vivandière with the 1st and 5th Rhode Island with her husband, Robert. She carried a flag at First Manassas and was slightly wounded. She is wearing garb typical of a vivandière with a military-style jacket and trousers worn under a skirt. The Ron Field Collection.

went to Lynn and informed him that one of his soldiers was a woman, prompting the captain to stride over to the company, pull Bradley out of the ranks, and discharge her since she had been “mustered in through mistake, was of female sex.” According to Sergeant Burns, “not one in the [company] knew she was a woman.” Nor did anyone realize that the woman was black. As it turns out, she was a runaway slave who Burns described as a “bright colored girl.” The man who recognized her was her master.4 Thus far, research has shown this Natchez slave girl to be the first black woman to serve as a documented soldier. And it is interesting that her service was in the Confederate army. What happened to her after she was discovered, along with her identity, remains a mystery.

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Researchers have suggested that military officials allowed William Bradley to remain with the regiment as a laundress and that she followed the unit to Port Hudson, where Miles’ Legion served garrison duty. The basis for this theory lies with an account from a regimental history of the 8th New Hampshire Infantry that records that “Mrs. Bradley, wife of a 2d sergeant in a company of Miles’ Legion was struck in the leg by a piece of shell this morning. She suffered amputation, but died soon after.”5 Researchers have connected William Bradley with Mrs. Bradley simply because of the last name and for both individuals’ association with Miles’ Legion. However, the new discovery of William Bradley’s slave status shows that the two women were in fact different people. In an effort to determine the identity of Mrs. Bradley, a search for her husband was conducted. It yielded one match: George Bradley, who served as a sergeant in Miles’ Legion. He was originally from New Hampshire and came south working on the railroad. In 1860, he was living in Proctor Township, Crittendon County, Arkansas, about fifteen miles from Memphis, the location Bradley gave as his residence when he enlisted in Miles’ Legion. He indicated that he was thirty-four years old and had been married within the year.6 Therefore, “William Bradley” and Mrs. Bradley were different women because William Bradley was a slave in 1860 when Mrs. Bradley married George. By May 1861, George Bradley appeared in New Orleans, where he was arrested under suspicion of being a Federal spy, likely because of his New England background. He claimed that his accusers, rival railroad men from Grand Junction, Tennessee, did so out of malice. And when numerous men vouched for his loyalty to the South, authorities released him, according to the New Orleans Crescent on May 10, 1861. George Bradley remained in New Orleans, and in March 1862, he further demonstrated his fidelity to the Southern cause when he enlisted in Company H of Miles’ Legion. Further research reveals that his wife’s full name was Mrs. Matilda A. Bradley. According to Port Hudson’s Post Hospital Ledger, she was struck in the left thigh by a shell on June 11, 1863, and died a few days later after surgeons amputated her leg. Colonel William R. Miles mentioned in a report the bombardment that claimed her life, “The enemy has opened some additional guns on me to-day, placed in a new position between Troth’s road and the river. He has kept up a tremendous fire during the

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day from all his guns and mortars.” Ironically, he concluded with, “[T]he small number of casualties would seem to indicate that a special Providence is protecting us.”7 Unfortunately, that was not the case for Matilda. While Miles’ Legion was serving garrison duty at Port Hudson, newspapers reported in May 1863 that an anonymous seventeen-year-old married woman from Mississippi was arrested in Augusta, Georgia, apparently for the sole reason of wearing men’s clothing, an offense cities across the country banned by law beginning in the mid-1800s.8 Specifically, the article appearing in the Savannah Republican on May 8, 1863, noted that she was dressed in “military apparel” and had been serving in an unnamed regiment stationed in Charleston. Two months later during the third day’s fighting at Gettysburg, Lieutenant William H. Peel, a Mississippi soldier, marched across an open field with Brigadier General Joseph R. Davis’s brigade, which began to draw artillery fire. Yet, according to Peel, he and his Confederate countrymen continued their advance “in the face of a perfect tempest of maddened shells that ploughed our line + made sad havoc in our ranks.” When they were about fifty yards from a stone wall, the Jerseymen of the 12th Regiment unleashed buckshot and ball from their smoothbores. Somewhere in the same general area of the field as Lieutenant Peel was a woman soldier who also braved the “humming of the death-dealing demons” of shot and shell. Captain George Bowen of the 12th New Jersey observed the effects of the deadly fire, “They fell like wheat before the garner.” Regimental surgeon Alvin Satterthwait simply stated that “it looked like murder.”9 That evening upon the conclusion of Pickett’s charge and the Battle of Gettysburg, Private Garrett Deacon of the 12th New Jersey Infantry served picket duty near the Emmitsburg Road in the general vicinity of the Brian barn. Weary from the day’s events, the Jerseyman lay down and fell asleep amidst the dead and injured, the most he said he had ever seen in one place at one time. While it appears that defying military doctrine did not bother him, the agonizing screams of the wounded that pierced the summer night had resonated with Deacon. Managing to awaken before the relief came—thereby avoiding severe punishment—Garrett noted that one particular Southern soldier lying next to him had wailed all night and that it was the most horrifying sound he had ever heard. Those tormented cries, he stated, emanated from a female soldier. While it is impossible to determine exactly where Deacon was sleeping on duty

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and, therefore, where the woman was struck down, she likely would have fallen in the general vicinity of the Brian barn and within fifty yards of the stone wall because Colonel Thomas A. Smyth had ordered his brigade—of which Garrett’s 12th New Jersey was a part—to hold their fire until the Confederates were within that range. Deacon further noted that the female next to him was “clost too” the aforementioned woman who had been killed near the approximate position of Arnold’s Battery. As discussed in the previous chapter, the Jerseyman’s reference to distance and space is vague, and it is difficult to ascertain precisely what he means by “clost too.” Garrett was stationed with his regiment behind the stone wall near the Brian barn towards the right of the third division, which is where the unit remained as night fell after the charge, when Deacon was out on picket duty. This position is approximately two hundred yards from where Emerson Middleton was wounded while serving with Arnold’s Battery. And it was “a bout there” where the burial detail discovered the dead woman and ultimately buried her. Whether one could consider these areas as close is debatable. For the two female casualties to be close to each other would mean that perhaps the burial detail discovered the woman’s lifeless body on a trajectory that was further out from the stone wall and slanted back away from the position of Arnold’s Battery forming an acute angle with the stone wall. Regardless, the locations where both of these women fell remain unknown. Likewise for their identities, but there exists a probability that the wounded woman lying next to Deacon in the general vicinity of the Brian barn was a Mississippian since Deacon and his 12th New Jersey Infantry faced Davis’s brigade during the charge. This command was made up mostly of Mississippians, specifically the 2nd, 11th, and 42nd Infantry regiments, in addition to the 55th North Carolina Infantry. This woman’s ultimate fate remains unknown but based on Deacon’s descriptions of her painful wails, she was likely badly wounded and perhaps perished later on as a result.10 Back in the western theater in early November 1863, the 64th Illinois Infantry discovered one of the recruits they picked up on the march from Iuka to Eastport harbored a secret. Private Henry Schelling of Company F noted that “the boys all took a notion to him,” and an ensuing examination led to the revelation that the youngster was actually a female. Her discharge deprived Schelling of a “bedfellow,” which he lamented.11 The Illinoisan provided scant details concerning this woman, but because she

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joined up with the 64th in Mississippi, it is reasonable to surmise that she hailed from the Magnolia State. If that were the case, questions arise as to why she decided to join the ranks of an invading force. Should she have met and fallen in love with a member of the regiment, it would seem that Schelling would have mentioned that she joined the unit to follow her new sweetheart, while perhaps withholding comments about his aspirations to become her bunkmate. She certainly may have harbored Unionist sympathies. Or perhaps her sense of adventure superseded the color of a uniform. Regardless of her motivations, this nameless girl’s service was cut short before she ever saw combat. And if she had somehow managed to maintain her ruse, she assuredly would have experienced vicious action with her unit during the Atlanta Campaign. The fighting that occurred at Peach Tree Creek on July 20, 1864, was especially ferocious. Federal division commander John W. Geary compared the carnage he witnessed there with that he experienced at Gettysburg. “The field everywhere bore marks of the extreme severity of the contest, and recalled to my mind, in appearance, the scene of conflicts where the same division [Geary’s] fought at Gettysburg,” he noted. “Not a tree or bush within our entire range [escaped] the scars of battle.”12 It was against this broken landscape that at least two Confederate women soldiers experienced the viciousness of Peach Tree Creek while serving in Brigadier General Winfield Scott Featherston’s Mississippi Brigade of Major General William W. Loring’s division, Lieutenant General A. P. Stewart’s corps. At 3 p.m., these Mississippi female fighters rose with their male comrades from the chalky, red clay trenches with “a wild, tumultuous, shrill cry . . . falling on the ear like a sudden and unsuspected clap of thunder” and charged towards a gap in the Federal line between Brigadier General Geary’s division and that of Brigadier General John Newton.13 The assault path of the Mississippians carried them across Tanyard Branch, through tall marsh grass, across an open field, and up Collier Ridge towards the mill, where, exhausted and drained from the Georgia summer heat, they crashed into the front lines of the Federals. There, the women soldiers and their male compatriots engaged in furious hand-to-hand fighting with Colonel John Coburn’s brigade. Part of Brigadier General William T. Ward’s division, Coburn had rushed to plug the gap between Geary and Newton.

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In addition to clubbing each other with rifles and fists, soldiers stood within twenty paces of each other exchanging rifle fire. The fighting in which the female soldiers and their male comrades engaged was absolutely brutal. Yet, the Confederates battled gallantly, leading one Federal soldier to remark, “They fought like very Devils.” However, Featherston’s determined Mississippians had penetrated the Federal lines so deeply that they began to take on concentrated fire from three sides. With no support forthcoming, Featherston had no option other than to withdraw his command, which was being shot to pieces. After trying to hold on to a pocket on Collier Ridge against an entire division, Featherston’s decimated brigade, including the women soldiers, now began to draw artillery fire from Lieutenant Thomas Sloan’s Pennsylvania Battery, which devastated them. Union clerk Harvey Reid observed, “The puffs of dust covering the hill shows where the canister balls is falling among them. You can see men turning complete somersaults as those deadly missiles strike.” The destruction of the Mississippians was staggering. Featherston’s brigade had suffered an astounding 55 percent casualty rate, more than Ward’s entire division. The devastation around the mill, the scene of some of the heaviest fighting, was especially shocking. As one Federal officer observed, “Few battlefields of the war have been strewn so thickly with dead and wounded as they lay that evening around Collier’s Mill.” So concentrated was the fallen that those who dared to navigate the broken field found the attempt difficult. Mindful to avoid stepping on any of the poor souls, Private Judson L. Austin and his comrades of the 19th Michigan Infantry discovered how challenging this task was as they surveyed the wrecked landscape and the fallen bodies that populated it. One youthful Mississippian in particular, gave the Wolverines pause. Much to Austin’s surprise, he learned that the youngster was actually a female who had been badly injured. “She was shot in the breast & through the thy & was still alive & as gritty as any reb I ever saw,” observed Austin.14 Her fate after being taken to the hospital is unknown, but it is doubtful that this female fighter from the Magnolia State survived such serious wounds. In the same division as Private Austin was an Illinois soldier who documented another incidence of tenacity and bravery of a wounded Mississippi female fighter left behind as the Confederate line gave way at Peach Tree Creek. Cut down as Colonel Benjamin Harrison’s brigade “poured a perpetual sheet of flame” into their foes, the woman received

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Peach Tree Creek battlefield, where approximately ten Confederate women were killed and wounded, including at least two from Mississippi. The Mississippi women of Featherston’s brigade gazed out on this very landscape. Library of Congress LC-DIG-ppmsca-32828.

a gunshot wound to her ankle, which resulted in the agonizing amputation of her foot. Yet, she “bore her suffering heroically,” according to the Illinoisan. The fiercely patriotic, saucy nineteen-year-old was unapologetic about the twenty-eight months she had served in the Confederate army and proudly proclaimed that she would “willingly suffer twice as much for her country.”15 This woman was another one of Featherston’s Mississippians, who fell on that bloody, hot day after hitting Ward’s division. And then in the waning months of the war, Private Richard Reamer of the 122nd Illinois Infantry reported in his diary that a woman was among the prisoners captured while skirmishing with the Confederates near Spanish Fort, Alabama on March 26, 1865. This woman may very well have been a Mississippian because the 12th Mississippi Cavalry was in the Federal front as they left present-day Daphne and marched north to Spanish Fort. However, they did have regulars serving as scouts with them from the 15th Confederate Cavalry, which was organized in the Mobile area in 1864 by consolidating the 3rd Florida Cavalry Battalion

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and five independent Alabama cavalry companies. Some of these regulars were captured during the skirmish. So while there is a good chance that the Confederate woman taken as a prisoner of war was a Mississippian, she cannot be positively identified as such due to the presence of the regulars. Interestingly, Reamer also noted hearing a report that a regiment of uniformed and armed women were within the works. This may have been merely a rumor. However, there were accounts of women actively assisting in the defense of Mobile prior to the siege of Spanish Fort. In 1863, a resident noted that women were dressing in men’s clothes and parading as soldiers about the outskirts of the city to give the illusion of a larger garrison force. The following year, a Northern newspaper also reported that women wearing soldiers’ clothes were “made to do duty at Mobile.” The correspondent quipped that authorities believed the “formidable display of breastworks” would deter an attempt to capture the city.16

Chapter 5 CORINTH AND IUKA

“The very earth shook.”

Just like the female fighters from the Magnolia State, their sister soldiers from other parts of the country served from the beginning of the war until the end. They fought in every major battle in the eastern, western, and trans-Mississippi theaters. Specifically in Mississippi, these women warriors participated in pivotal engagements that affected the outcome of the war. By the spring of 1862, Confederates suffered crushing defeats in the west which ultimately led to the fall of Nashville, the first state capitol the Federals seized. Such dire proceedings opened the door to the Deep South and began a chain of events that would eventually slice the Confederacy in two. In response, the Confederates under General Albert Sidney Johnston began massing a large force in northeastern Mississippi around the railroad junction of Corinth. In a preemptive strike, he moved his army towards Pittsburg Landing, twenty miles to the north, where Major General Ulysses S. Grant awaited reinforcements from Major General Don Carlos Buell and his Army of the Ohio. Prior to the latter’s arrival, however, the two armies clashed in Tennessee in what was to become known as the Battle of Shiloh, which began on April 6, 1862. This engagement proved to be a murderous two-day affair that made hardened veterans out of several women soldiers who went on to serve in Mississippi and corpses out of some who would have. After both sides experienced the largest casualty rates of the war to date, the Confederates were forced to withdraw, leaving the door to northern Mississippi open in the process. 61

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The next stepping stone to Mississippi’s demise lay only a few miles away at Corinth, a small hamlet of three hundred buildings and twentyeight hundred residents, mostly small farmers. Both sides deemed it vital to the war effort because it was located at the intersection of two railroads that held the Confederacy together: the Memphis and Charleston and the Mobile and Ohio.1 Following the death of Johnston at Shiloh, General P. G. T. Beauregard led the retreating Confederates towards this significant junction. The cautious Federals slowly pursued them to Corinth and ultimately laid siege for approximately a month with one of the largest military forces assembled to date led by Major General Henry Halleck, who used his political influences to replace Grant following the pounding he took at Shiloh. Among the 120,000-man force were at least four women soldiers in the ranks who undoubtedly noticed as they marched south a trail of discarded equipment cast aside by the Confederates on their retreat to Corinth. Iowa soldier Sergeant Cyrus Boyd referred to the area as “the most Godforsaken country” he ever saw and “one vast graveyard.” The spring rains had washed away shallow graves of men and horses, which proved to be a ghastly sight to Boyd and the women soldiers in the Federal ranks with him. “Skulls and toes are sticking from beneath the clay all around,” he wrote. “And the heavy wagons crush the bodies turning up the bones of the buried, making this one vast Golgotha.”2 Such was the horrific and surreal environment that enveloped the Union soldiers, both male and female, as they began to lay siege to Corinth. With Buell’s Army of the Ohio at the Federal center was an anonymous girl with the 2nd Indiana Cavalry of Major General William “Bull” Nelson’s division. En route to Corinth, the unit skirmished with the Confederates and actively participated in the siege. The troopers of the 2nd Indiana then proceeded to northern Alabama with Buell’s army and thenceforth to Kentucky. While in Louisville, Private Joseph Frederick Shelly wrote his wife, Pauline, in February 1863, that a female trooper had been discovered in his regiment. He noted that she had served for twenty-one months and suffered two wounds. It was not her injuries that led to the revelation of her secret, however. The Hoosier girl had fainted, and her comrades found her out in the process of giving her a warm bath to revive her. Private Shelly believed that she would have remained undiscovered “for a long time” if not for her incident.3 Ironically, this

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Front and back side of an image of Catherine Lewis, 2nd Minnesota Infantry, taken in Nashville after the war. Private collection of Joyce Henry, Charles City, Virginia.

anonymous woman was not the only female trooper in the 2nd Indiana Cavalry. Sarah Smith of Fayette County was discovered in April 1862, prior to the unit’s trek into Mississippi. Apparently, Smith was not the lone female soldier to be ousted around that time because the reporter who wrote about her in the article appearing in the Pittsburgh Daily Post on the 18th opened the account with, “Romantic young ladies, of late, are frequently found in military service.” Major General George H. Thomas commanded the Federal right during the siege of Corinth. There were at least three women in his Army of the Tennessee, including a girl known only as “Soldier Tom,” who was approximately fourteen years old. She served over nine months as a teamster with the 45th Illinois Infantry, which was held in reserve during the siege.4 Soldier Tom may not have been the only woman soldier with the Federal right wing at Corinth. Catherine Lewis of the 2nd Minnesota Infantry, part of Brigadier General Robert L. McCook’s 3rd brigade, could have possibly been present as well. Unfortunately, researchers have thus far been unable to uncover any information about her beyond an

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inscription on a post-war image.5 Therefore, the timeframe of her service is unknown, and it is impossible at this time to know whether she was indeed at Corinth or not. If she resided in Minnesota when the war broke out, she undoubtedly joined the unit there when it was raised and followed it to Mississippi. Another female soldier with Thomas in Brigadier General Albin F. Schoepf ’s 1st brigade was a woman known only by her male alias, “Frank Deming.” According to her service records, she enlisted in Company A of the 17th Ohio Infantry on August 23, 1861, at Lancaster, Ohio. She was eighteen years old, stood five feet six inches tall, had gray eyes, black hair, and a dark complexion. She stated that she was a student before the war. Yet, when hostilities began, she decided to trade in her books for a rifle and serve as a soldier, which she successfully did until military officials discovered her secret while in camp near Corinth in May 1862. Though she had been quietly performing her duties, which included serving as a nurse in a hospital, for nearly a year, she was deemed unfit for service because of her sex and was discharged for “disability” because of a “congenital peculiarity that should have prevented her admission into the army—being a female.” Military officials removed her name from the records thenceforth onward and did not include her on the muster out roll of the company.6 Researchers have thus far been unable to uncover the cause of her discovery or her true identity. A month after the Federals discovered Deming and ousted her, Private Frank Tupper of Ford’s Independent Illinois Cavalry wrote his parents about another woman soldier unmasked at Corinth in mid-June. Tupper said his comrades brought her before the adjutant, and she was discharged and sent home to Cincinnati. Private Tupper did not know her name or unit but believed she had been serving with a Kentucky regiment.7 All of these women suffered during the siege along with their male comrades. In the hot, Mississippi summer heat, Corinth had turned into a maelstrom of malady and misery. Sergeant Boyd of Iowa noted, “The climate, water and food has about finished us up.” He further observed that all of the men looked bad and that there was “scarcely a well man in the Company. . . . all of them have the diarrhea and are scarcely able to take care of themselves.” Private B. F. Stalder of the 63rd Ohio Infantry observed, “There is not over thirty in my company that is able for duty. . . . we are camped right in a swamp. It is enough to kill all the men.”8

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Across the lines inside Corinth, the Confederates faced a deteriorating situation that was rapidly approaching a critical stage. Military officials had turned nearly every building in the town into a hospital in order to treat more than five thousand wounded soldiers from the Battle of Shiloh. Corinth’s overcrowding dilemma placed a strain on the water supply, which was already low from an unusually dry spring season. Soldiers were forced to seek hydration from filthy pools. The water that was available was described as “milky” and unfit for man or beast. Sergeant S. B. Barron of the 3rd Texas Cavalry discovered that while he could lead his horse to water, he could not make him drink. Indeed, the animal refused to partake of the same polluted liquid as the soldiers. Barron noted, “If I failed to ride him to a small running branch some two miles away he would go without drinking.” The food was even more wretched. The Texan continued, “[A]s for the beef, I could as easily swallowed a piece of skunk.”9 Among the Confederate soldiers suffering from the deteriorating living conditions inside Corinth was a tanned and freckled unnamed woman who had followed her husband and brothers to war with one of the Missouri brigades that would eventually be reorganized and commanded by Brigadier General Francis Cockrell. To add to the unpleasant situation, this woman and her male Missouri comrades were clad in uniforms of undyed wool that were of a distinctive look and smell. One soldier recorded, “In pulling off and putting on the clothes, the olfactories were constantly exercised with a strong odor of that animal [sheep]. Our brigade was the only body of troops that had these uniforms issued to them, and were often greeted with a chorus of ba-a-as. . . . Our clothes, however, were strong and serviceable, if we did look and feel sheepish in them.”10 Inadequate rations resulting from the increasing supply crisis as the siege progressed combined with poor sanitation conditions, gave rise to widespread disease. According to Private Sam Watkins of Tennessee, “We became starved skeletons; naked and ragged rebels. The chronic diarrhea became the scourge of the army. . . . Almost the whole army attended the sick call every morning.” Out of Beauregard’s seventy-five thousand troops, more than eighteen thousand were ill, leaving their able-bodied comrades to face an enemy twice their size. The Confederate commander determined that defending Corinth with such a weakened force against a much larger foe to be a risky undertaking that would have likely resulted

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Iuka, Mississippi, ca. 1865. Courtesy George Eastman Museum via Flickr Commons.

in the capture of his entire army. Therefore, he decided to evacuate the town during the night, which they were able to do unhindered thanks to a ruse consisting of setting up Quaker guns, or logs cut to resemble cannons, and continuously running trains to make it appear as if reinforcements were constantly arriving. The ploy successfully held the Federals at bay and allowed the Missouri woman and her fellow Confederates to slip away on May 30 to Tupelo.11 Corinth was now in the hands of the Union forces. Through the summer and fall of 1862, the Federals maneuvered into position to assault Vicksburg and Chattanooga, the latter a target of Buell. In order to hinder him, Major General Braxton Bragg ordered Major General Sterling Price in Tupelo to threaten the Corinth area and, therefore, draw Union troops away from Buell who was in middle Tennessee. With intelligence reports claiming that a Federal contingent was in Iuka, Price began his march on September 11, 1862, towards the flourishing railroad town known for its mineral springs. After a day of skirmishing, the Confederates marched into Iuka the following morning. Except for a few Union cavalrymen attempting to burn military stores,

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the gray-clad soldiers found the town abandoned, as had the Federals at Corinth five months prior. But unlike the Confederates at Corinth, the Federals had ample reinforcements in close proximity that allowed them to immediately put a plan into effect to retake Iuka. Fearing a combined force under Price, Bragg, and Major General Earl Van Dorn, Grant decided to seize the initiative before the Confederates could unite. He sent Major General E. O. C. Ord to the Burnsville area in order to threaten Iuka from the northwest and Major General William S. Rosecrans in Jacinto via Rienzi around to hit Iuka from the southwest. The Federal plan called for Ord to attack once he heard Rosecrans engage Price. However, Ord never advanced because he did not hear the sounds of battle because of a phenomenon now known as an acoustic shadow, which arises when topographical obstructions, such as wind currents, buildings, trees, or other elements of the landscape, disrupt sound waves. As a result of the effects, individuals close to an event, such as a raging battle, will not be able to hear any ensuing sounds. However, others further away will. This is what occurred at Iuka. Troops in the area with Ord did not realize that the two forces had clashed and, therefore, never engaged the main body of Confederates. Among the Federals who stood listening to nothing more than the wind whistling through the pine trees was at least one woman soldier, but because she was with Ord, she witnessed little action other than skirmishing. The Nashville Dispatch on March 11, 1863, reported her name as Sarah E. Bradbury. However, research reveals that her first name was actually Elizabeth. Before the war in 1860, the sixteen-year-old was living on the outskirts of Nashville with the King family.12 Her mother, whose name was Sarah and perhaps the inspiration for Elizabeth’s alias, had died of consumption when the little girl was seven. Research has yet to reveal who her father was. Undoubtedly, Bradbury was desperately searching for stability when, according to her, she met a man in the 7th Illinois Cavalry with whom she fell in love. Induced to join his unit, she disguised herself as a boy and enlisted to be with him in Company C, where she served as an orderly. Acting in such a capacity meant that Bradbury would have been tasked with such chores as making coffee for the officers, caring for their uniforms and horses, helping with their meals, and other similar responsibilities. In short, she was a servant. Because orderlies were considered noncombatants, Bradbury would have remained in the rear with

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the wagons and out of the direct line of fire. The post was not devoid of risk, however. Elizabeth and her fellow orderlies would have been exposed to diseases and overshot artillery rounds during battles. Orderlies could be soldiers detailed from the ranks or civilians hired by officers. Because the latter individuals were not formally-enlisted soldiers, they did not have to submit to the medical examination required for entrance into the military. Nor did they have service records. Furthermore, it was the officers who hired these orderlies, and not the government, who were responsible for providing them with wages, food, and clothing. And even though military regulations forbade civilian orderlies from wearing a uniform, photographic evidence reveals that officers supplied them with one anyway. Besides, at least one military official regarded civilians serving in such capacities as teamsters and servants as soldiers. On page 11 of his 1864 edition of Customs of Service for Non-Commissioned Officers and Soldiers, as Derived from Law and Regulations, and Practised in the Army of the United States: Being a Handbook for the Rank and File of the Army, Brigadier General August Valentine Kautz notes, “In the fullest sense, any man in the military service who receives pay, whether sworn in or not, is a soldier, because he is subject to military law.” While it is unknown to which category Elizabeth Bradbury belonged, whether formally enlisted soldier or civilian orderly, she would have been with her regiment at the Battle of Iuka, during which the 7th Illinois Cavalry marched in advance of Brigadier General Leonard F. Ross’s division down the Burnsville and Iuka Roads. According to Lieutenant Colonel Edward Prince, his troopers were in line approximately three miles from Iuka and awaiting orders to move forward. But none ever came. And once the Confederates evacuated the town, the unit was ordered back to Burnsville with Bradbury among them.13 On the Confederate side, General Price, called “Old Pap” by his men, had originally planned to abandon Iuka before the two armies clashed so that he could link up with Van Dorn. However, he ran into Rosecrans’s forces and engaged them before resuming his quest to locate the dashing and controversial commander. Skirmishing commenced on the night of September 18, 1862, while the battle itself began the following day with the Confederates caught in the middle. Neither side accomplished anything during the fight other than inflicting a staggering amount of casualties in only a few hours. Among the soldiers who experienced the viciousness of

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the short fight was the anonymous Missouri woman. Though the battle itself was brief, the horror that this woman and other soldiers experienced must have made the situation seem like an eternity. Several of her male comrades testified to the ferocity they endured at Iuka. One Arkansan noted, “We pushed on so near the enemy that in the last shot which was fired the blaze of our guns met.” Another veteran declared that Iuka was “one of the hardest little fights imaginable.” Price agreed, stating that the battle “was waged with a severity I have never seen surpassed.” On the Federal side, Brigadier General Charles S. Hamilton reiterated the Confederate sentiments when he proclaimed, “I never saw a hotter or more destructive engagement.” Hamilton should know. He was experienced with fiery situations. Earlier in the battle, he ordered the burning of a widow’s home in retaliation for the death of a member of his escort who had been killed by Confederate skirmishers positioned around the house.14 Undoubtedly, the Missouri woman soldier witnessed the smoke billowing skyward that warm, September day as the house blazed in what one chronicler called “an unworthy and disgraceful act.” Ironically, in ordering the burning of the structure, Hamilton managed to inadvertently hamper his own advance as the smoke choked and blinded the soldiers passing the smoldering house on the Jacinto Road, thereby causing the Federal columns to stack up. Only nightfall brought a conclusion to the slaughter at Iuka but not to the horrific sounds and smells that permeated the tainted night air. One Confederate vividly remembered that the “odor of fresh wounds was mingled with that of burned leaves by thousands of bullets.”15 This Southerner, along with the Missouri woman and their comrades, listened to the wails of the wounded on both sides as they lay on their arms that night wondering if that was to be their fate when the fight was rejoined the following day. Fortunately for them, there would be no military action on the 20th. Price’s subordinates convinced him to evacuate Iuka instead of risk the destruction of his army should Ord arrive and bring an even more superior force to bear. So the anonymous Missouri woman soldier and the remainder of the Army of the West managed to escape in the early hours of the morning. The Federal pincer strategy had failed due in part to Ord’s absence, which ultimately saved Price’s army. Following the engagement, the Confederates withdrew to Baldwyn, where they rested for several days before moving on to Ripley. There,

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on September 28, 1862, they united with Van Dorn, Price’s superior, and turned their attention back to Corinth. Recapturing the town would mean that the Confederates would once again control the vital railroad junction and cut the Federals off from an important supply base. In order to accomplish this feat, the Southerners would have to dislodge Grant’s command. Rosecrans, who led one detachment, the Army of the Mississippi, was ordered from Iuka back to Corinth while Brigadier General James B. McPherson commanded another detachment of the Army of West Tennessee. Attacking from the northeast, the Confederates occupied earthworks constructed during the siege five months prior. Fighting began October 3, 1862, when they assaulted the outer defenses. Exploiting a gap between two Federal brigades, the Confederates forced the Union troops back to their inner works. But an overly confident Van Dorn called off further attacks on the 3rd because his soldiers were suffering from fatigue and water shortages. That delay allowed Rosecrans to regroup his troops in the inner works and prepare for another attack the following day. Van Dorn had planned to attack at daybreak but postponed it by approximately four hours because Brigadier General Louis Hebert had fallen ill. This delay ultimately allowed the Federals enough time to prepare for the onslaught. Once the order was given, Confederates moved forward in the face of withering Federal artillery fire. They took Battery Powell and closed in on Battery Robinette, where vicious hand-to-hand fighting occurred. A scattering of gray-clad soldiers made their way into Corinth but were quickly driven out with the Federals hot on their heels. Confederates who took Battery Powell included the Missouri woman who had followed her family to war. One of her comrades wrote about the assault, “The scene was one in which a single glance comprehended all that in battle is sublime, grand, and terrible.” Observing their advance, one Federal noted that the Confederates moved “with a bravery, a desperation that threatened calamity to our army.” When the Federals opened up on the rolling wave of gray and butternut, a Missourian remarked that “the very earth shook; the plain was swept with every conceivable projectile. . . . A perfect tornado of grape and canister came whizzing and pouring upon us, and, as we neared the works in the face of this storm, the rattle of musketry and the hissing of minié balls were added to the already murderous character and spirit of the hour.” The Missouri woman and

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Battery Powell. An unidentified Confederate woman soldier from Missouri bore witness to the brutal fighting that occurred here during the Battle of Corinth. Private collection of Dr. William Jackson, Corinth, Mississippi.

her comrades leaned low and turned their heads, as observed by a Federal who described the advancing Missourians as having their faces “averted like men striving to protect themselves against a driving storm of hail.” Yet on came the Missourians at the double quick through the tempest of lead and overran the redoubt in vicious hand-to-hand combat. However, the woman soldier and her comrades were now in range of Federal artillery and faced double-shotted canister fired by one gun of the 12th Wisconsin Battery at six rounds per minute, more than double the normal rate. One of the female fighter’s fellow Missourians, Sergeant James Payne, recalled the horror, “Men’s heads were blown to atoms. Fragments of human flesh still quivering with life would slap other men in the face, or fall to earth to be trampled underfoot.” Another Missourian, Sergeant William A. Ruyle, described the interior of the lunette as “one of the bloodiest places I ever saw. . . . On all sides of me I could see both the enemy and our men lying in the bleaching sun, in the dust which was about six inches deep. Every second it seemed I could see some comrade fall dead or wounded.” In the face of such decimating fire, the woman and her Confederate allies halted

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and then fled at the “thribble quick,” according to one Missouri Yankee with the 10th Regiment who witnessed his Confederate counterparts relinquish Battery Powell.16 During the Confederate assault on this earthen fort, two companies of the 1st Missouri Battery (US) fled to the rear in chaos and confusion. The resulting stampede of artillery horses and flying limbers crashed into Colonel Thomas Sweeney’s reserves, of which the 81st Ohio Infantry was a part. With this unit was a woman serving as a surgeon’s assistant who likely witnessed this event and possibly even treated soldiers wounded in the incident. Her name was Elizabeth Finnern, a German immigrant who followed her husband to war. Even though sources claim that she served as a soldier, her obituary states that when John enlisted at Sandusky, she was taken to Cincinnati, where she was thoroughly examined by three physicians and accepted into the army as a laundress. Her service records confirm that she acted in this capacity. After the post was abolished, General John A. “Black Jack” Logan allowed her to remain with the unit as a surgeon’s assistant. While it is unclear whether she ever engaged in combat, her obituary states that she was furnished with a tent and “drew the regulation ration of a soldier, and much of the time wore male attire. In times of danger, she carried a musket.” She also sustained an injury from which she never fully recovered when a mule kicked her while she was helping a wounded soldier at Shiloh. As a surgeon’s assistant with the 81st Ohio, Finnern roamed Mississippi battlefields aiding the wounded at Iuka and Corinth. Following the Battle of Corinth, Elizabeth went east with the unit. At Lookout Mountain she performed a service for Grant who praised her and presented her with a towel. She kept the gift until shortly before her death at which time she gave it to a friend as a keepsake.17 After mustering out with the 81st Ohio Infantry at Columbus, Ohio, the Finnerns settled in Greensburg, Indiana. There, Elizabeth died on July 15, 1907. She is buried alongside her husband in the Soldier’s Circle in South Park Cemetery. At the bottom of their headstone is inscribed, “She Served in Male Attire Untill Her Sex Was Detected When She Was Detailed as a Nurse Serving 3 Years.” Elizabeth Bradbury was also at Corinth serving as an orderly with the 7th Illinois Cavalry, which was detailed to guard the Federal rear and flanks. The battles of Iuka and Corinth would be Bradbury’s last ventures into Mississippi as a soldier. Fate took her out of the cavalry and the state.

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She claimed that the day after she enlisted to be with her sweetheart, to whom she referred as “Mr. H.,” Confederates captured him while he was out scouting. Bradbury initially remained with the unit without him but left two months later after discovering a new love interest in the 22nd Illinois Infantry, which she then joined. But she left the 22nd as well because she claimed her new sweetheart proved to be less than a gentleman. Research calls into question whether Bradbury was indeed motivated by lovesickness to enlist in these units as she claimed. A roster search failed to identify a man in the 7th Illinois Cavalry who was captured during Bradbury’s service. Mr. H certainly could have escaped his captors or was exchanged and returned to his unit. A more intensive search of individual service records would be required to determine if that had been the case. If Mr. H. was indeed fictional, it is reasonable to surmise that Bradbury also concocted the story about the other man in the 22nd. As with other women soldiers, she may have presented to the press a characterization of herself that adhered to the Victorian romantic notions of feminine loyalty to a man in order to avoid ostracism. Elizabeth Bradbury finally drifted into the ranks of the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry, Company L, which was detailed as Brigadier General Philip Sheridan’s escort. However, an act of indiscretion ended her service. While out foraging in the vicinity of Murfreesboro in late February or early March 1863, she and Ella Reno, who was serving as a teamster with the 2nd East Tennessee Cavalry, imbibed too much applejack, which was an alcoholic beverage, and fell into Stones River. Their splashing and shouting alerted their male comrades who waded into the water and pulled the spluttering girls to the bank, where the men discovered their secret in the process of resuscitation. The mortified officer in command of the foraging expedition, Colonel Joseph Conrad of the 15th Missouri Infantry, accused the pair of demoralizing his men and reported them to Sheridan, who initially questioned the colonel’s sanity until the girls were located in camp. The general observed them and described Bradbury as a “prepossessing young woman . . . bronzed and hardened by exposure.”18 Sheridan did not identify the girls when he wrote about them in his memoirs, but the press revealed both their feminine names and male aliases. Bradbury’s was “Frank Morton” and Reno’s was “John Williams.” However, research suggests that reporters mistakenly switched the names, and that Bradbury was actually John Williams. As for Frank Morton, the

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name was likely an error for “Frank Martin,” an alias that provost documents show Reno used.19 In a Nashville Dispatch article from March 11th, 1863, Bradbury claimed that she had been in the service for six months at the time of her discovery. This would place her first enlistment, which was with the 7th Illinois Cavalry, at approximately September 1862. In an article appearing in the Chicago Tribune on the same day as the Nashville Dispatch piece, the correspondent noted that “John Williams” had been “doing chores about camp since last September [1862].” This lines up with Bradbury’s term of service and her role as an orderly, or servant. Furthermore, the same article mentioned that Frank Morton enlisted the previous July, in 1862. This aligns with an article from the St. Johnsbury Caledonian from May 22, 1863, which noted that Frank Martin enlisted in the 2nd East Tennessee Cavalry in July the year before, 1862. Furthermore, the Nashville Dispatch reported on October 18, 1864, that a woman named Sarah, using the alias “John Williams,” was discovered while serving as a private in the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry and sent to the post prison. Even though the article appeared over a year after the incident occurred, it was not uncommon for newspapers to publish past events. For example, several newspapers, including the Chillicothe Constitution Tribune of January 23, 1935, carried the report of a gardener uncovering the body of a woman soldier at Shiloh a year after the event happened, as originally reported by the Memphis Press Scimitar on February 10, 1934. So this may be the case with the Nashville Dispatch article of 1864, and it may refer to Sarah Elizabeth Bradbury a year after the events transpired. What are the odds that two women named Sarah served in the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry within a year apart, where the alias “John Williams” was connected with both accounts? Or Bradbury could have defied the odds by rejoining the unit using the same alias. But that assumes that military officials had been ignorant of her discovery following the affair at Stones River and believed whatever excuse she gave them for her absence after returning to the unit. Further evidence that Bradbury was not Frank Morton stems from Charles Woodruff of the 25th Michigan Infantry. In a letter to his father, he said that while in Louisville he had encountered a woman soldier whose assumed name was “Frank Morton.” Ella Reno, alias “Frank Martin,” was indeed in the same place at the same time as Woodruff when he wrote his letter. Furthermore, the details he gave of the woman soldier’s story matches perfectly with that of Reno.20

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The ordeal did not end for Reno and Bradbury after they were fished from Stones River and condemned for disturbing Colonel Conrad’s peace of mind. Sheridan sent them to Nashville, where they spent time in prison. There, the girls shared their stories. Bradbury, however, claimed the reason she was discovered and arrested was not her drunken escapade, but because another orderly had betrayed her secret out of jealousy over the reputation she supposedly earned for her proficiency in her duties. The fact that she lied to the press about this incident strengthens the possibility that she also lied about chasing boys into the various units in which she served. Upon release, Bradbury’s sidekick, Ella Reno, drifted into the ranks of the 8th Michigan Infantry. While serving with this unit, she arrived in Louisville approximately a month after officials in Nashville released her in the company of an unnamed captain escorting Confederate prisoners. At this point, Ella took advantage of the trip to visit the post headquarters. There, she encountered the commander, Colonel Marcellus Mundy, who, impressed with her intelligence, detailed her to serve as an orderly at Barracks No. 1. It was while she was serving there that she was once more discovered and discharged. The press yet again picked up her story. And when “Private Frank Martin” related the history of her military service to reporters, like Bradbury, she could not bring herself to admit that it was a drunken incident that led to her dismissal from her previous unit, the 2nd East Tennessee Cavalry. Indeed, she told a reporter that it was a gunshot wound to the shoulder at the Battle of Murfreesboro (also called the Battle of Stones River) instead of a shot of applejack that betrayed her. Nevertheless, newspapers from around the county carried the tale of her heroics. If Reno had indeed been wounded at Murfreesboro, surely such a sensational event would have been documented at the time of the battle, which occurred from December 31, 1862, to January 2, 1863. But thus far, no newspaper articles or soldier accounts have been discovered corroborating her tale. The first time a narrative of her alleged wounding in battle appeared in print was in a Louisville Daily Journal article from April 29, 1863, a little over a month after the drunken incident with Bradbury led to their dismissal from their respective units. Furthermore, this article stated that Reno was serving in the 2nd East Tennessee Cavalry when she was wounded in the shoulder at Murfreesboro. Previously mentioned newspapers noted that she enlisted in that unit in July 1862. If she had

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been wounded at the Battle of Murfreesboro, the unit would likely not have allowed her back in the ranks after she was discovered. She would have undoubtedly had to have found another regiment to continue her service. But she did not. She was still with the 2nd East Tennessee Cavalry when she drunkenly fell into Stones River in late February or early March 1863, over a month after the battle. The fact that she was with the same unit from July 1862 to March 1863 means that she obviously never left it. Therefore, she was never wounded, discovered, and discharged after the Battle of Murfreesboro. Reno just thought it sounded better in the press to say she was discharged for being wounded instead of being drunk. In order to try to save her army career, Reno penned a letter from Barracks No. 1 in Louisville on May 11, 1863, to Abraham Lincoln begging him to allow her to continue to serve her country, to which she claimed she was fiercely loyal. History does not record whether the president ever responded. Regardless, Reno’s plea was for naught as a few days later, Colonel Mundy sent her to Major General Ambrose Burnside in Cincinnati. It was at that point when she claimed to be the niece of Brigadier General Jesse Reno who had been killed at the Battle of South Mountain eight months prior. However, genealogical research has thus far been unable to establish any kinship to the general. Furthermore, she never mentioned in her letter to Lincoln that she was Reno’s niece. Surely, she would have done so if she had wanted to gain any clout with the president so that he would grant her request to remain in military service. Yet, she did not. Therefore, she likely invented her kinship with General Reno. And she was perhaps financially motivated to do so. When she arrived in Cincinnati, she undoubtedly learned of a fund established to provide aid for the general’s family. At that point, it had reached $11,000. So Ella may have hoped to gain a share of the sizable sum by claiming to be Reno’s niece. She very well could have been related, albeit distantly. Genealogical research reveals that her father may have been L. W. Reno, a captain of a passenger steamer that serviced cities from Cincinnati to New Orleans along the Mississippi River. This is a distinct possibility given that several newspaper articles about her mention that she was from Cincinnati. L. W.’s wife, Mary, was born in Tennessee. According to the 1850 census for Cincinnati, they had two daughters, Isabella and Ellen, ages five and four respectively, both born in Louisiana, undoubtedly during their father’s travels in connection with his profession. Ella could have been either

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one. In her letter to Lincoln, she claimed that her father commanded a gunboat. This, too, could have been a concoction that she based on her father’s profession. Another possible family connection was Francis “Frank” Reno who, at the age of 49, served as a pilot or assistant pilot aboard several gunboats on the Mississippi River. Francis was originally from Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, where Ella claimed she grew up. Francis may have even served as an inspiration for her male alias, “Frank.” Furthermore, Francis’ wife, Mary, was originally from Wheeling, where Ella claimed she was educated in a convent. However, genealogical research does not reveal any children of Francis and Mary Reno named Ella or any variation of the name.21 Regardless of who she really was, Ella Reno’s whereabouts after meeting Burnside in Cincinnati in 1863 are unknown. She next showed up in Nashville in November the following year when officials sent her to the provost in Nashville along with another female soldier named F. Lane, alias “George Smith,” from Indiana. On November 19 Major General William T. Sherman ordered officials to provide the girls with dresses and then send them home. Two months later in January 1865, Lieutenant Benjamin F. Travis of the 25th Michigan Infantry encountered Reno at a train station in Bellaire, Ohio. He recognized her from meeting her in Louisville in 1863 when his unit was stationed there and Reno was in the city with the 8th Michigan and ended up detailed at Barracks No. 1. This time, she was wearing a dress instead of a soldier’s uniform. At that point, Ella Reno disappears from the historical record until 1866 when she was working as a prostitute in Louisville. So while Reno continued to make headlines after she and Bradbury were released from prison in Nashville in March 1863, Elizabeth Bradbury’s story from that point, however, remains unknown.22 As for the Battle of Corinth, while Bradbury was fortunate to have missed the heaviest of the fighting there, Mary Ellen Wise of Indiana reportedly served with distinction and was promoted to first sergeant for heroic conduct on the Mississippi battlefield in 1862. Various newspapers from across the country recounted different versions of her story. Some noted that she assumed the alias, “John E. Wise,” “James Wise,” or “William Wise” and enlisted in Company I of the 34th Indiana Infantry in 1861. Some accounts claimed she enlisted with a brother. Others stated she used the military as a means to escape her abusive stepmother.

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Regardless of her motivations, she asserted that she fought in several battles and had been wounded multiple times, which ultimately led to her discovery and discharge. By August 1864, Wise had made her way to Washington, DC, where she attempted to collect back pay for her alleged service in the 34th Indiana Infantry. However, the paymaster general declined to issue Wise her wages because of the military’s refusal to acknowledge women who served as soldiers. Undaunted, she took her case to President Abraham Lincoln who reportedly “blazed with anger” and ordered Wise to be paid, despite her lacking proper discharge documentation.23 Lincoln was not the only one she charmed while in Washington. There she met Sergeant Lloyd Delevan Forehand of Corydon, New Hampshire, who was serving guard duty with the Veteran Reserve Corps. After a whirlwind romance, the couple married on September 28, 1864.24 But a mere four months later, the marriage had soured to the point where Wise began stalking her husband and threatening to shoot him. The Evening Star noted on February 4, 1865, that officials had arrested her, and a judge ordered her to depart the city. Reporters were silent on the cause of the lovers’ spat. However, many years later, an elderly Forehand divulged the details in what amounted to a death-bed confession, an account his daughter documented in a family manuscript. In the chronicle, Lloyd admitted to marrying a Confederate spy named Mary Ellen Wise. Apparently, Wise operated in the guise of a Federal soldier and used the back pay issue as a means to gain entrance into the White House. After being granted an audience with Lincoln, she put on a pitiable show of poverty and despair that moved the president to the point that he offered her a job as Mary Todd’s personal assistant. It was her unexplained disappearances while on their honeymoon in New England and back in Washington, DC, that led Lloyd to suspect that his new bride was a Confederate spy, and he devised a trap in which he divulged erroneous information in her presence. When it returned to the White House within twenty-four hours, Lloyd’s suspicions were confirmed, and he confronted his wife. Exposed, the hysterical Wise threatened to shoot her husband on the spot, which led to her arrest. It was a secret that Forehand kept for decades and an account that is supported by a provost document noting that Wise had been arrested in

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Louisville for “impersonating a detective” a few months before her visit with Lincoln.25 The fact that Mary Ellen Wise was a spy instead of a soldier as she alleged explains the inconsistencies that plagued the tales she told newspaper reporters. Specifically, the 34th Indiana, her purported unit, was not present at any of the battles she claimed, including Corinth. If she had indeed participated in the fight for the vital railroad junction, she would have been wearing gray. After her husband exposed her scheme, Wise shared her story in order to avoid a spy’s fate at the end of a rope. She claimed that she and her brother enlisted in the Confederate army, but her identity was soon discovered. Instead of dismissing her completely, officials proposed that she offer her services to the Southern cause as a spy, which she accepted. Wise’s ultimate fate after the judge ordered her out of Washington, DC is unknown. But wherever she traveled, she did so as a single woman. Unsurprisingly, Forehand divorced her as soon as he could procure a furlough home to New Hampshire.26 While it is questionable, and likely doubtful, that Mary Ellen Wise was at Corinth, the unnamed Missouri woman found herself in the thick of it, especially at Battery Powell. When the Federals recaptured the fort, the female fighter and her Confederate comrades retreated unhindered. Rosecrans postponed any efforts to give chase until the following day, October 5, whether out of fear of another attack or sheer fatigue, even though he had five rested regiments at his disposal. Ultimately, he made this decision despite receiving a written order from Grant to vigorously pursue the enemy. Rosey did not sit idle, however. While waiting to see the Confederates’ intentions, he rode along the lines proclaiming victory while personally dispelling the rumor of his death. Meanwhile, the defeated Van Dorn managed to escape with his army intact.27

Chapter 6 MISSISSIPPI CENTRAL RAILROAD CAMPAIGN TO HOLLY SPRINGS

“A disgraceful proceeding on the part of our forces . . . ”

Following the Battle of Corinth, Grant once again took over command of what would become known as the Department of the Tennessee from Halleck who had been called to Washington to serve as general-in-chief of all Union forces. With most of the Mississippi River under Federal control at that point, Grant began to turn his attention toward securing the entire waterway. Vicksburg was the key. And after failed attempts to capture the city by naval assaults from the river, Grant started to put overland plans into effect in November 1862, by marching from Grand Junction, Tennessee, south along the Mississippi Central Railroad. One Federal soldier involved in the ensuing skirmishing was an anonymous woman with the 1st Kansas Infantry. In a letter to his sister, Lieutenant Frederick L. Haywood of the 1st Minnesota Artillery wrote that the woman succumbed to disease at Lake Providence, Louisiana, and that her secret was discovered when her body was being prepared for burial. Upon hearing the news, Haywood went to the hospital to see her. “She was of pretty good size for a woman with masculine features,” he observed. He then explained that she had enlisted in the 1st Kansas when the regiment marched into Missouri and because of this, nobody knew anything about her. Despite her mysterious past, her comrades respected her for the skilled soldier that she was. “She always sustained an excellent reputation in the Regiment,” wrote Haywood. “She was brave as a Lion in battle and never flinched from the severest fatigues or the hardest duties.” This woman warrior was a sergeant when she died, which is a testament 80

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to her prowess. As a matter of fact, Haywood believed she would have been promoted to a lieutenant if she had survived her illness.1 Unfortunately, Haywood never mentioned the name of this lioness. After examining the roster of the 1st Kansas Infantry, historians conjectured that she served under the alias, “Alfred J. Luther.” Service records show that Luther was indeed a sergeant at the time of death. However, recent research reveals that discrepancies exist regarding this theory. Perhaps the most compelling evidence countering the Luther identity centers around the fact that Federal and state census records dating back to 1840, when he was approximately five years old, show him as a male. Another inconsistency involves the enlistment location. Luther joined the 1st Kansas at Elwood, Kansas, his place of residence, and mustered in with the rest of the unit at Leavenworth, while Haywood said that the anonymous woman joined the unit in Missouri.2 Further issues regarding the Alfred J. Luther theory lie with the alleged date of death. According to his service records, Sergeant Luther succumbed to disease at Lake Providence, Louisiana, on March 22, 1863, approximately two weeks before Haywood reported the death of the Kansas woman soldier in his letter dated April 6. He claimed that she died “yesterday,” which would place the date of her death on April 5. Since he opened the letter by discussing the anniversary of the Battle of Shiloh, which was April 6–7, 1862, it does not appear that he composed the missive over the course of time. At least one soldier, however, seems to corroborate the Alfred J. Luther identity. In his unpublished memoirs, Private Henry Clinton Parkhurst of the 16th Iowa Infantry recorded that around midnight on March 23 another division of his corps departed Lake Providence for Vicksburg. And then, “A day or two afterwards a squad of us visited the grave of a woman who had recently been buried. . . . She had been a soldier.” Like Haywood, Parkhurst relayed compliments he had heard regarding this woman soldier’s military prowess. She had fought in many battles, he remarked, and had “borne the fatigues and privations of war without a murmur.” Parkhurst further noted that she had been a member of a Kansas regiment. The only unit from that state in Parkhurst’s XVII Corps was the 1st Kansas, which was actually in the same division as the 16th Iowa. Therefore, this woman and the one Haywood documented were the same.3 Yet, both men noted a different date of death for her, with Parkhurst’s timeframe seeming to corroborate the Alfred J. Luther theory.

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However, inconsistencies still exist regarding the census records, location of enlistment, and the date of death Haywood implied in his letter. Therefore, with all of these puzzling discrepancies, scholars cannot positively identify the female fighter of the 1st Kansas as Alfred J. Luther with the information presently available. A possible answer to all of the questions is that medical personnel may have incorrectly recorded Luther’s date of death. Or perhaps he and the woman soldier died within a short time of each other, and officials purged her records upon discovery, leaving Luther’s records as the only ones showing a sergeant who died around the same time as Haywood’s letter. Perhaps she was not a sergeant at all but a private, and her body was laid next to the sergeant’s prior to burial. As the story spread from soldier to soldier, the identification of the woman could have mistakenly changed from the body next to the sergeant to the actual sergeant. The woman soldier remains anonymous and is likely buried as an unknown in Vicksburg National Cemetery with the rest of the male soldiers who died there and in the surrounding areas, including Alfred J. Luther who lies in section K, grave 5971.4 While the 1st Kansas and the rest of Grant’s forces were attacking south along the Mississippi Central Railroad, Major General William T. Sherman was leading troops out of Memphis into northern Mississippi as a second prong of the invasion. Marching with “Cump” was the 116th Illinois Infantry and a woman disguised as a man in Company A. Known only as Kate, she was an apparent prostitute, “an occupant of the Brick,” and joined the regiment in Memphis, which was no secret to some of the men. But apparently it was to Private Henry C. Bear. “I did not notice her till in camp on [the] Tallahatchie,” he admitted, “and then I would not [have] if some one had not showed her to me. . . . You could hardly tell her from a man.” Eventually, Colonel Nathan W. Tupper learned about not only her ruse but also that she had served picket duty. As a result, after drill on December 8, 1862, he reprimanded Lieutenant John B. Purdew, who was in command of the company when the offense occurred.5 Whether Purdew was aware of her gender is unknown. As Kate stood on guard, she possibly reflected on her decision to cut her hair and don a uniform. By joining the army, she was perhaps merely taking advantage of an opportunity to escape prostitution. Why would a working woman seek to ply her trade while disguised as a man and on active campaign with little comfort or safety? One prostitute who did indeed

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use the military to escape the institution was V. A. White of Nashville, who wrote, “I tired and worried of that life, so I began to study how to get out of it. And at last I made up my mind to join some northern troops.”6 Kate may very well have taken a similar path, or attempted to. Regardless of her station in life, she proved to be a competent soldier as evidenced by the fact that she participated in drill and served picket duty, a military procedure that required a soldier’s strict attention to detail. In Mississippi, Kate, the 116th Illinois, and the rest of Sherman’s troops awaited the arrival of Grant, whose goal was to link up along the Tallahatchie River, but that never happened because Grant was stalled in Oxford. As a result, he ordered Sherman back to Memphis in December 1862, where “Cump” would stage another assault. Kate undoubtedly returned to Tennessee with the unit and remained there when the 116th journeyed south again towards Vicksburg. Joining Kate in Memphis was another woman soldier who had just returned to the city after marching to Holly Springs and back with an unnamed Federal Missouri unit. Reported as “Canadian Lou,” she apparently felt the need to unwind from the strenuous demands of soldier life and began to imbibe liquor on December 18, 1862. The alcohol betrayed Lou that night in Memphis. Police arrested her for inebriation, at which time she revealed her secret in her intoxicated state. However, officials may have already been aware of who she was because she was apparently well known in Memphis.7 Meanwhile, Confederates recognized the weakness in Grant’s lengthy supply line and raided the base at Holly Springs with three cavalry brigades led by Van Dorn. Entering the town at a full gallop on December 20, 1862, the Confederates surprised the Federals and managed to capture a wealth of supplies. With his base decimated, Grant had no option other than to abandon his overland approach to Vicksburg.8 After the raid, the Confederates headed north to further disrupt Federal communications and ran into several Union units that had fled Holly Springs. These Federals met up with the green 90th Illinois Infantry, Chicago’s Irish Legion, and rallied to face the enemy at Coldwater Station. Alerted by the smoke arising from burning supplies in Holly Springs, Colonel Timothy O’Meara formed the regiment in a ravine and waited for the Confederates to approach. “I . . . found the enemy in force 5000 or above strong on my front and left,” he observed. Riding along the line,

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Elizabeth Quinn, most commonly known as Frances Hook, in 1864. Private collection of Wayne Jorgenson, Eden Prairie, Minnesota.

Lieutenant Colonel Smith McCleavy ordered the men to “get up into rows, boys!” Though it was hardly a proper command, the men of the Irish Legion promptly obeyed it with a purpose. O’Meara then made a demonstration that “disconcerted the enemy, who after the exchange of a few shots fell back for reinforcements.” These reinforcements never came because the Confederates mistook the sounds of exploding ammunition in Holly Springs for artillery fire. As a result, “The enemy was repulsed with some loss,” according to O’Meara. One of the soldiers who “got up into rows” there at Coldwater Station was teenager Elizabeth Quinn who, while standing next to her husband, “Fired two volleys into the rebel ranks with the coolness of a veteran.”9 Her comrades, who referred to her as the “petticoat warrior,” had been aware of her true identity since the unit departed Chicago for the front. Quinn originally enlisted in male disguise in August 1862, but was detected when the 90th Illinois was still at Camp Douglas. Different accounts exist regarding her discovery. In an overly dramatic version, her youthful appearance aroused the suspicions of Colonel O’Meara, who had

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Elizabeth Quinn as “Frank Miller,” Co. G, 90th Illinois Infantry, 1864. Private collection of Randy Beck, St. Charles, Missouri.

observed her while she served picket duty. Feigning a past association, he told her that she strongly resembled a younger friend of his who he had not seen in a while. This fabricated friend had a red mark on his left breast, and so in order to confirm his belief that this young sentinel was indeed his long lost acquaintance—or rather a woman in disguise—O’Meara ordered Quinn to remove her coat and shirt. A horrified Elizabeth refused and vehemently denied the accusations. But she eventually gave up the ruse and admitted the truth after the colonel pressed her further. In another version, and probably a more accurate one, a captain, in whose unit she had briefly served before being discovered and dismissed in Chicago, alerted O’Meara of her presence in the regiment. The colonel then confronted her, and she admitted the truth without being ordered to strip to the waist. Instead of sending her away, though, he allowed her to accompany her husband in Company G while serving as a Daughter of the Regiment, or vivandière.10 If Colonel O’Meara had indeed banished Quinn from the 90th Illinois, she would have had no stable home to which to return. She likely had no

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desire to see home again anyway considering the life she left behind. Even though newspapers commonly reported that Elizabeth was an orphan, “bereaved of parents,” research shows that this was not entirely accurate. It is unknown exactly how much of her family’s tumultuous past the young girl was aware of and whether she deliberately lied to cover it up. Or perhaps individuals around her withheld the truth in order to protect her. Elizabeth was only about four years old and her brother, Thomas Jr. two when their father, an Irish immigrant, married a woman named Mary Brown. Research has yet to reveal who the children’s mother was or what exactly happened to her. But around the time of his marriage to Mary, Thomas Sr. sent his two children away to live with other families.11 According to census reports, Elizabeth was living in the Shaw household and her brother with the Cokely family in La Moille, Illinois, in 1850. Shortly thereafter, though, the children’s uncle, Peter, took them in and provided for them for the next several years. Peter was in the militia, and so it was while Elizabeth was living with her uncle when she was first exposed to at least somewhat of a military culture.12 This experience may very well have marked the beginnings of Elizabeth Quinn’s future service in the army. Other events transpired during this time that propelled Elizabeth towards her destiny as a soldier, occurrences that were instigated by a series of bizarre circumstances that thrust her and her brother into a turbulent environment permeated with betrayal, infidelity, vengeance, and greed. What was perhaps supposed to be a temporary foster care arrangement seemed to become permanent as Thomas turned into a deadbeat who conveniently dumped his kids off on his brother. By early 1855, Peter had had enough and sued him in order to collect compensation for room, board, and care for the two children, in addition to $200 he had personally loaned him, as well as money Peter had paid others for assisting in the care of Thomas’s kids. However, according to Peter, Thomas had been telling others that he was about to flee the state in an effort to avoid payment and that he had begun removing his property from Bureau County and selling it off so that officials could not seize it. A sheriff was dispatched to locate him to no avail.13 To add fuel to the fire, Thomas seduced his brother’s wife away from him in 1855 after Thomas filed for divorce from his wife, Mary Brown, who had abandoned him in 1851. Peter had recently wed Mary Ross several years prior, and now he claimed Thomas did on several occasions,

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“debauch and carnally know her.” This prompted Peter to divorce his wife for adultery and abandonment as well as sue his brother for $3,000—a considerable sum—for the loss of the “service, comfort, fellowship, and society” of his wife since Thomas was at fault for her alienating him and destroying her affection for him.14 While the court made no judgment on the claim for $3,000, Thomas was to compensate Peter for the care of Elizabeth and Thomas Jr. However, when Peter died in 1860, he had still not collected all that Thomas owed him. But despite their differences, Peter managed to leave his brother $1 in his will, which was also the amount that was to go to Elizabeth. Meanwhile, Peter left Thomas Jr. $50 to be collected when he turned twenty-one. While it is easy to understand why Peter left his brother such a meager sum—or rather surprising that he left him anything at all—the discrepancy between Elizabeth’s and her brother’s inheritance is puzzling. Perhaps the reason was chauvinistic. Or perhaps Elizabeth was a disagreeable youngster. Regardless, neither father nor daughter collected their inheritance from Peter. Thomas Jr., on the other hand, claimed his in 1870.15 Conflict over money and debt continued after Peter’s death. Thomas Sr. made a claim against Peter’s estate for nearly $500 that Peter owed him in 1859 for wheat, oats, corn, pork, and cash. And Thomas still had not paid his debts to Peter’s estate after the Civil War had ended, five years following Peter’s death. By that time, a lawyer with Peter’s estate had labeled Thomas insolvent, and he seems to have disappeared from the historical record. It was in this unstable environment filled with familial conflict that Elizabeth and Thomas Jr. grew up. And at some point, Elizabeth, who was fourteen when her uncle Peter died, decided to leave her turbulent life behind in La Moille. She traveled the nearly five miles south to Arlington, where she caught a train on the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy line and headed east. When she disembarked over one hundred miles away in Chicago, Elizabeth Quinn reinvented herself as Frances E. Hook, the name by which history commonly remembers her. Eyewitnesses described her as “about medium hight, with dark hazel eyes, dark brown hair, rounded features and feminine voice and appearance,” and “stout and muscular, with heavy features, high cheek bones [and] black abundant hair.” Before she enlisted, she cut her hair “very close.”16

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Her name also appeared in newspapers as Eliza Miller, which was a combination of her true first name, Elizabeth, and a surname she used when she enlisted.17 Of course, neither Hook nor Miller was her birth name, and research has yet to reveal her connection to them, if any existed. They could have been the names of people she knew at some point in her life, or she may have simply created them as red herrings in order to protect her dignity in a society that determined a woman’s virtue by her adherence to the domestic sphere, which she violated when she disguised herself as a male and enlisted in the army. And considering a woman’s virtue was all that Victorian society valued of women, it is not surprising that an unmasked female soldier would lie in order to protect herself and her family. Such was the case with Fanny Chamberlain of the 6th Ohio Cavalry who told reporters that her name was Fannie Lee, which is how it appeared in the newspapers. Likewise for Marian McKenzie who not only used several male aliases, including Henry Fitzallen, but she also went by the female names of Harriet Brown and Kate Brown. McKenzie, whose usage of multiple aliases demonstrates the lengths Victorian women would go in order to avoid the repercussions from stepping outside societal norms, declined to answer reporters’ questions after she was discovered, explaining, “This sensation will have publicity enough, . . . and I do not want the innocent to suffer for the guilty.”18 Like Chamberlain and McKenzie, Quinn also lied about who she truly was in order to protect herself. Elizabeth originally refused to reveal a name at all or place of residence after a wound betrayed her secret, but acquiesced because government officials needed to know who she was and where she lived in order to provide her with transportation home. She did so, yet asked that the officers not publish her personal information.19 Her pleas were for naught, though, because contemporary newspaper reporters learned what they thought was her name and published it as Frances Hook, which turned out to be an alias. So Quinn’s decision to withhold her true identity was wise considering that her fear of exposure in the press was ultimately realized. Not only did Elizabeth assume multiple feminine names, individuals reported several male aliases for her during her service as well, including Frank Miller, Frank Fuller, Frank Henderson, and Harry Miller. However, Frank Miller is perhaps the only one Quinn legitimately used. Frank Fuller appears to be a mistake on the part of modern historians

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who perhaps inadvertently recorded the name in their notes. There was another woman soldier who assumed the alias, “Charles Fuller,” which may serve as the basis for the error. But there are no primary sources connecting Frank Fuller with Elizabeth Quinn or Frances Hook. As for Frank Henderson, a newspaper reporter appears to have assigned this alias to her alias. The fact that he noted in an article appearing in the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel on March 3, 1864, that “we will call [her] Frank Henderson” implies that it was the reporter and not Quinn who concocted this pseudonym. The correspondent never even mentioned a feminine name in the article, which suggests he was perhaps attempting to afford her some sort of privacy, and this is likely why he transformed “Frank Miller” into “Frank Henderson.” Another source that connects Frank Henderson with Elizabeth Quinn is a book published two years after the war. However, the author simply quoted the aforementioned newspaper article verbatim. The last known source for this particular alias is an image of Quinn in uniform where someone recorded the name “Frank Henderson” on the back. However, it is unknown who wrote it and when. The individual could have very well found the name in the aforementioned newspaper article. As for Harry Miller, the basis for this alias is an account of a nurse who encountered Quinn while the latter was recuperating from a wound in a hospital in Nashville.20 Considering no other source exists connecting Harry Miller to Elizabeth Quinn, this pseudonym may have been the result of a faulty memory since the nurse’s account was published three decades after the war. Frank Martin is another name historians have commonly associated with her. However, research shows this is a mistake facilitated by post-war publications that erroneously mixed Quinn’s story with that of “Frank Martin’s,” likely because of the similarities in the aliases: Frank Miller and Frank Martin. In their second volume of History of Woman Suffrage (1887), Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage included a section (p. 19–20) that recounted stories about women soldiers from wartime newspapers. A partial source of confusion regarding Frances Hook/Ella Reno/Frank Martin can be traced to an article that the authors cited nearly verbatim from the Louisville Daily Journal of April 30, 1863, with the only difference being the names. It appeared as “Frank Martin” in the 1863 article but “Frank Miller” in the 1887 book. Perhaps in an attempt to correct what they perceived to be an error, the

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authors created one when they changed Frank Martin to Frank Miller and Frank to Frances in their book. Or perhaps they based their research on a post-war article appearing in multiple newspapers, including the Burlington Hawk Eye of June 1, 1884, which blended together the stories of Frank Martin and Frank Miller. The authors used other newspaper articles about Frank Martin, such as another Louisville Journal 1863 article reprinted in multiple newspapers, including the St. Johnsbury Caledonian of May 22, to tell the story of Frank Miller, who was the woman who called herself Frances Hook. Regardless of the source of the careless error, it is apparent that the tales of Frank Martin and Frank Miller became erroneously intertwined at some point after the conclusion of the conflict. In all of the wartime articles about Frances Hook, a reader will not find the alias Frank Martin. And in wartime articles about Frank Martin, a reader will not find the name Frances Hook or Elizabeth Quinn. But it was Elizabeth Bradbury’s sidekick, Ella Reno, and not Elizabeth Quinn, who assumed the alias, Frank Martin.21 Some researchers have even suggested that Reno and Quinn were actually the same person. But this theory is faulty as well because it is based on the flawed post-war accounts containing their jumbled stories. Reno and Quinn were, in fact, different women with different physical appearances, backgrounds, and wartime experiences. Eyewitnesses described Reno as having auburn hair with blue eyes and Quinn with black or dark brown hair and dark hazel eyes. Some newspapers reported that Reno was from Pennsylvania while others noted she was living in Cincinnati. Meanwhile, Quinn was from the Chicago area.22 Both Reno and Quinn served in multiple units. Newspapers such as the St. Johnsbury Caledonian of May 22, 1863, reported that Reno was with the 2nd East Tennessee Cavalry and the 8th Michigan Infantry. As for Quinn, the list of regiments associated with her include the 65th Illinois “Home Guards,” 11th Illinois, 33rd Illinois, 19th Illinois, and 90th Illinois, among others. Regarding the 33rd, a captain in the 26th Illinois who had previously served as a sergeant in the 33rd claimed in an article appearing in the Bloomington Weekly Pantagraph on April 20, 1864, that she was never with that regiment and, therefore, likely did not participate in the Battle of Fredericktown as has been claimed, at least not with the 33rd. And as for the 19th, it may very well have been an error for the 90th because of the similar phonetics and spelling of the words: nineteenth and ninetieth.

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There was a woman in the 19th Illinois, however. But “John” was discovered in Company F just before the unit departed Camp Long in Chicago for the front in July 1861. In an effort to save her ruse, military career, and her reputation, the exposed woman presented to Captain Luther Allard a letter supposedly from the “soldier boy’s” mother remarking that she had given her son to her country and bidding him goodbye. As it turns out, the fake John had stolen the letter from a real John to use as evidence should anyone question her gender. The plan failed. Allard dismissed her and suggested that she wait until the army began enrolling “Amazon Zouaves.” The woman begged him not to send her away. She allegedly claimed to be serving with her husband, who, according to her, was all she had in the world. But her pleas fell on deaf ears. After officials removed her from camp, despair over being separated from her spouse drove her to jump into the Chicago River that night. However, a policeman saved her and took her to the Home for the Friendless from which she later fled and then promptly disappeared.23 Uncertainty remains as to why the officer took her to a house of refuge as opposed to sending her home. If she were married, she surely would have had a home to which to return. This situation calls into question whether the woman, whose identity remains unknown, did indeed have a husband as she stated. Furthermore, the woman’s father, Mr. Olson, claimed her at the police station and took her home.23 Even though questions arise regarding this woman’s marital status, it is apparent from her father’s surname that she was not Elizabeth Quinn, though the fact that there was indeed a woman who briefly served with the 19th Illinois may have led individuals to assume she was Frances Quinn of the 90th Illinois. Indeed, the details of Quinn’s account are as garbled as her names and regiments. She told reporters that she enlisted to be with her brother who was ultimately killed. One version says that this sibling met his fate at Tunnel Hill in Georgia. A more widely circulated article claimed he died at Shiloh. Both are irrelevant because her brother survived the war. Even though Elizabeth never named him, research reveals him to be the aforementioned Thomas Quinn Jr., and he was her younger brother, though most accounts say he was older or even her twin. He did not enlist until 1864, when he was sixteen or seventeen years old, and that was in the 52nd Illinois Infantry. This lone brother was not the only family member with whom Elizabeth claimed to have served. An Illinois soldier

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wrote a letter appearing in the Memphis Bulletin on April 1, 1863, which indicated that she “has a father and two brothers in the Union army, and she determined to make the fourth of her family that were willing to offer up their lives in defense of our country.” This, too, was untrue because Elizabeth’s father, Thomas Sr., never served. Besides, she told reporters that she was an orphan, which may have very well been the truth considering her father abandoned her and her brother. The fabricated military father and two brothers could be George, Samuel, and Henry Shaw, the three men of the foster household in La Moille where she was living in 1850.24 However, none of them appeared to have served either. As with her name, Quinn may have relayed false information about fighting with family members in order to protect her identity while garnering sympathy and support in the newspapers for her plight. Victorian society could be more forgiving of a woman who overstepped the lines of propriety for romantic reasons. Or perhaps Quinn could have been telling the truth about serving with a brother by referring to an unknown foster brother instead of her biological one. While Quinn did not enlist with her biological brother, there is evidence that she may have served with a husband. Elizabeth was discovered around September or October 1862, a little over a month into her service with the 90th Illinois. But according to Captain Ira J. Bloomfield of the 26th Illinois Infantry, which was brigaded with the Irish Legion, Colonel Timothy O’Meara allowed her to accompany the regiment as the wife of a man serving in the unit. A soldier in the 14th Illinois Infantry writing under the name of Cabrick corroborated Quinn’s marital status after learning her story when 90th Illinois was in Lafayette, Tennessee, during the spring of 1863. According to Cabrick, she married “an excellent young man, a member of her mess and remained with the regiment ever since.” A private with the 41st Indiana Infantry, James Madison Jones, provided further evidence of Quinn serving with a loved one. Jones was working as an attendant in a Nashville hospital in which medical personnel treated Quinn for a gunshot wound in 1864, and noted that she had been serving with a lover.25 According to the aforementioned Captain Bloomfield, the name of Quinn’s husband with whom she served was Jere O’Kane who is undoubtedly Jerry Kane of Company G, of which Quinn was a part. A Canadian by birth, Kane, whose name appears in records as both Jerry and Jeremiah,

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joined the 90th Illinois in October 1862. The twenty-one-year-old was a resident of Chicago, stood five foot six inches tall, had black hair, black eyes, and listed his occupation as a soldier. Kane had previously served as a teamster in Company I of the 67th Illinois Infantry, which was a three-month unit organized to serve as a garrison force at Camp Douglas in Chicago. His lieutenant in that regiment, John Murphy, had raised Company I but left the unit to recruit men for Company G of the 90th Illinois. Kane ultimately followed Murphy into the Irish Legion, and when he enlisted, he denoted that he was married. This indicates that Jerry had wed at some point between June 1862, when he listed his status as single upon joining the 67th Illinois, and October when he enlisted in the Irish Legion. This supports his marriage to Elizabeth Quinn whom he possibly met while serving in the 67th Illinois. Evidence shows that Elizabeth may have served—albeit perhaps only briefly—in this regiment. One of the other units attributed to Quinn was the 65th Illinois Infantry “Home Guards.”26 This regiment was a three-year unit that served as a garrison force at Harper’s Ferry until it was captured in September 1862. Upon parole, the regiment saw action in Tennessee and Georgia. The fact that this unit’s service does not match the moniker of “Home Guards” renders it reasonable that the newspapers reported the wrong regiment, and that Elizabeth originally served in the 67th Illinois Infantry, which was indeed a type of “home guard” unit garrisoning Camp Douglas in Chicago. And perhaps this is how she met Jerry Kane. Interestingly, Elizabeth Quinn never told reporters she was serving with a husband, only her brother. At Nashville, a nurse named Annie Wittenmyer, who had encountered Elizabeth there after initially meeting her in a hospital in Chattanooga, asked her why she enlisted. Interestingly, Quinn did not mention a husband or a brother. Rather, she claimed, “I thought I’d like camp-life, and I did.”27 The only known individuals thus far who mentioned her serving with a husband or a lover were Cabrick, Private Jones, and Captain Bloomfield. Furthermore, research has yet to uncover a marriage record. Yet there is a picture of her taken in 1864 in Nashville in which she is wearing a wedding ring. What is odd is that out of all of the surnames associated with Elizabeth, Kane is not among them. Post-war documents list her last name as both Steward and Stanard, one likely a mistake for the other. Was Elizabeth briefly married to someone else with one of those surnames between Kane’s death in 1864

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and her marriage to Matthew Angel in 1866? Or was Jerry’s real last name Steward/Stanard? Like his wife, he very well could have enlisted under an alias. As a matter of fact, another woman soldier from Illinois observed that “lots of boys enlisted under the wrong name.” Kane very well could have been one of those, which would make sense considering genealogical research has thus far failed to locate any definitive records for Jerry Kane. If Elizabeth Quinn and Jerry Kane were indeed married, she became a widow when he was killed at Ezra Church on July 28, 1864. He is buried in Marietta National Cemetery, section H, grave 9008. It is unknown whether Elizabeth was aware of his death, however. She had just been released from a hospital in Nashville the month prior after recovering from a leg wound, and it is unknown where she went immediately thereafter.28 Regardless of Quinn’s garbled story, it is clear that she served with the 90th Illinois Infantry. She, along with the Irish Legion, first saw action in Mississippi at Coldwater Station following the Federal rout at Holly Springs, which, according to a newspaper reporter, Elizabeth denounced as a “disgraceful proceeding on the part of our forces, who could have held the place.”29 While Holly Springs smoldered, Sherman and his troops departed Memphis on transport vessels bound for the Yazoo River in an effort to invest Vicksburg from the north. One Confederate woman soldier who was aware of the impending clash was Mary Ann Clark. “And I expect to be in it,” she wrote.30 However, fate had other plans for her, and she ultimately missed the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou, what many historians consider the first battle of the Vicksburg Campaign. Clark’s first stint in the army began in October 1861, when the collegeeducated minister’s daughter left behind her Kentucky home, her teaching profession, her children, and an abusive marriage in order to enlist. In the hopes that the military would provide an escape from her tormented life, she joined what would become the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry as “Henry Clark” at the age of twenty-five. While her small size hindered her from enlisting as a soldier, Captain T. B. Collins allowed her to accompany the unit as his servant. Newspaper correspondents who shared her story reported her name as Mary Cook and described her as “not above medium height, rather slight in build, features effeminate but eye full of resolution and spirit . . . well informed upon politics, literature, and other general topics.” Lieutenant Colonel John Q. Wilds of the 24th Iowa Infantry

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described her in a letter to his wife as “brazen . . . but sharp as a steel trap.”31 Interestingly, there was a woman serving in Wilds’s own regiment, of whom he was unaware. Her name was Mary Smith and her account appears in subsequent chapters. After serving for several months, Mary Ann Clark was discovered and discharged from her duties. She returned home in February 1862, but left again four months later when grief and perhaps a desire for vengeance over the murder of her brother-in-law by a Unionist mob drove her back into her refuge, the army. During this stint, she was taken prisoner. As was the case with Elizabeth Quinn, newspaper reporters garbled her story. Her history, feminine name, unit, male alias, and where she was captured differ. Her name appeared as Anna or Amy Clark(e). Some newspapers reported that when her husband, Walter Clark, left for the war early on, she enlisted in a Louisiana cavalry unit and served until she became dissatisfied with the mounted service. She then transferred to the infantry for which she said she was better suited. The truth is that the cavalry unit was not from Louisiana but the aforementioned 2nd Kentucky Cavalry. The infantry unit was supposedly the 11th Tennessee Infantry, and she served as “Richard Anderson” until she was taken prisoner at the Battle of Richmond, Kentucky, fought August 29–30, 1862. The problem is that the 11th Tennessee was not present at Richmond. Another source claimed she was “James Anderson” of the 5th Tennessee Infantry and that she was captured at the Battle of Perryville on October 8, 1862. And yet another newspaper noted that she was taken by a Federal detachment, which gives rise to the distinct possibility that she was not captured during a battle at all but by a patrol, a more likely scenario.32 In addition to these inconsistencies, she told newspaper reporters that she fought in the battles of Shiloh and Fort Donelson, which is impossible given that her mother noted in a letter that Mary Ann was at home from February to June 1862. Clark further stated that her husband, Walter, was killed at Shiloh and that she personally buried him. In another version, she claimed to have found his dead body upon the battlefield at Perryville. After burying him there, she said she took his place in the ranks and served until she was wounded and taken prisoner. The fact is that her husband’s name was not Walter Clark. Walter was her ten-yearold brother. Her husband’s name was George Walker, and the story she told about burying him was probably just wishful thinking on her part,

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considering that he was an abusive spouse, a compulsive gambler, and an adulterer who ultimately abandoned his wife and children before the war, bound for California where he met and married another woman while still married to Mary Ann.33 She likely concocted the romantic story in which she portrayed herself as a dutiful Victorian wife burying her husband in order to garner sympathy and support from a critical press. Regardless of the garbled details, the fact remains that Mary Ann Clark was captured by the Federals, who initially sent her to prison in Louisville, where her feminine sneeze betrayed her secret, according to an article appearing in the Boston Herald on December 27, 1862. Military officials then transferred her to Cairo, Illinois, where citizens provided her with feminine clothing, which she donned for her trip south to be exchanged. The reporter observed that she hid her face behind a veil. But that did not hinder her from partaking of whiskey and tobacco, which she enjoyed “with the gusto of a veteran.” While in prison at Cairo, Clark wrote a letter to a couple of friends informing them that she expected to be exchanged soon, after which time she planned to travel to Mississippi in order to participate in the impending battle that would ultimately culminate at Chickasaw Bayou.34 From Cairo, she boarded the steamer, City of Madison, bound for Vicksburg, which the Dix-Hill Cartel had designated as the prisoner-of-war exchange point in the west. With the timberclad gunboat, Lexington, serving as an armed escort, the steamer made its way down the Mississippi River. As they hove to in sight of Vicksburg, Clark and the other passengers would have noticed Confederate soldiers lining the banks of the river city. One diarist noted, “The Rebel pickets taking advantage of the presence of the flag of truce which accompanied the prisoners, showed themselves in groups along the levee smoking and lounging about in the most nonchalant manner imaginable.”35 Julius Aroni, editor of the Tensas Gazette, witnessed the arrival of the overcrowded City of Madison on December 20, 1863, and their transfer to the Charm, the steamboat on which Confederates sailed out to trade prisoners. The vessel was 165 feet long with a 26-foot floor and 5½ feet depth of hold. She had two 25-foot paddle wheels with 7-foot buckets. Part of her opulent amenities that Mary Ann Clark may have noticed as she boarded the steamer included a chandelier and silverware. As the

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approximately nine hundred prisoners disembarked from the Charm, two in particular caught Aroni’s attention: Mary Ann Clark and General John Hunt Morgan’s brother, Captain Charlton Hunt Morgan, who had been wounded and taken prisoner at Shiloh. After arriving on shore, Clark, Morgan, and the other prisoners were taken to any number of camps in the area to await a formal exchange. Mary Ann likely ended up in Jackson because, according to an article appearing on December 30, 1862, a reporter for the Jackson Mississippian had spotted her there a few days earlier. Sources say that she had been exchanged for a Union woman taken under similar circumstances in Virginia.36 By that time, the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou was in its initial stages, and she ultimately missed the fight. Next, Clark told the reporter for the Jackson Mississippian she was heading east to rejoin Bragg’s command, which was in Tennessee at that time. Nearly a month after she departed Jackson, the editor of the Winchester (Tennessee) Daily Bulletin reported on January 24, 1863, that he saw her dressed up “a la militaire” in Atlanta. She revived the tale of her serving in an unnamed Louisiana cavalry regiment and mentioned that she was there on furlough, which is also likely not true seeing how she had been exchanged just a month prior. And she repeated the story of her husband’s death at Shiloh, a story she concocted likely to protect her dignity and that of her family. Mary Ann Clark then disappeared from the wartime historical record after this sighting. Historians have contended that Private Robert Hodges Jr. of the 24th Texas Cavalry was the last known person to see Clark in uniform during the war. In a letter to his father in August 1863, he noted that “among the curiousities I have seen since I left home, one I must mention, a female lieutenant! I had heard of her deeds of bravery in several battles and a few evenings I was to the station [Tyner’s Station] about a quarter of a mile distant from the camp. I discovered quite a crowd. Approaching, I enquired what was up. One of the soldiers directed my attention to a youth apparently about seventeen years of age well dressed with a lieutenant’s badge on his collar. I remarked that I saw nothing strange. He then told me that the young man was not a man but a female.” Hodges then quoted nearly verbatim parts of the aforementioned Jackson Mississippian article that detailed her background. As a result, historians have always believed Hodges’s account to be about Clark. However, the fact that the woman he saw was a lieutenant and recognizable as a woman, although

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not initially by Hodges, lends weight to the argument that he saw the woman who called herself Loreta Velazquez, or “Lieutenant Buford,” instead of Mary Ann Clark. For the latter to be the case would mean that Clark would have had to have found a new unit and work her way up to lieutenancy within approximately seven months, which is a bit of a stretch, especially considering she spent the first four months of her military career as an officer’s servant as opposed to a formally enlisted soldier. Furthermore, the fact that this woman at the station garnered attention from a crowd as a disguised Confederate lieutenant matches Velazquez’s modus operandi. Not only that, but Velazquez claimed at one point that her last name was Clark, which provides a plausible explanation for the misidentification. Moreover, just days before Hodges wrote about seeing the female lieutenant in the vicinity of Chattanooga at Tyner’s Station, a Confederate soldier in the 9th Tennessee Infantry reported that Velazquez was wearing her uniform in Chattanooga and that she persisted in being called Lieutenant Buford.37 Further evidence that the female lieutenant Hodges saw was Velazquez and not Clark lies in a corroborating account by Bromfield Ridley who served on General A. P. Stewart’s staff. He wrote, “One evening she [Velazquez disguised as Lieutenant Buford] came to General Stewart’s headquarters, at Tyner’s Station, with an order from Major Kinloch Falconer to report to him as a scout. Immediately discovered to be a woman, she was sent back.”38 Ridley did not give a timeframe for this sighting, but Stewart’s headquarters had indeed been established near Tyner’s Station at the time that Hodges wrote his letter about the female lieutenant. Therefore, it is reasonable to surmise that Hodges and Ridley observed the same individual: Velazquez posing as Lieutenant Buford. Thus, Hodges saw Loreta and assumed she was Mary Ann Clark based on the Jackson Mississippian article. This piece was widely distributed and appeared in newspapers in many of the Southern states. Therefore, Hodges would have had access to one, which he assuredly had in his possession when he wrote the letter to his father since he quoted nearly verbatim from it. Historians have used the Hodges account to claim that Mary Ann Clark rose to the rank of lieutenant. However, the Texan’s letter is the sole source mentioning her as an officer. Therefore, by establishing the female lieutenant Hodges observed as Velazquez and not Clark, it purports that

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Clark was never promoted. Furthermore, her service during the Civil War cannot be definitively confirmed beyond January 1863. Where she went, what she saw, and what she experienced after the newspaper reporter spotted her in Atlanta, remains unknown. But her unwavering support of the Southern cause, for which she was prepared to die, undoubtedly remained steadfast. In the letter that she wrote while a prisoner at Cairo in 1862, she asked her friends to contact her mother. “Tell her what a good rebel soldier I have been. . . . Tell her that I never expect to see her again,” she lamented. “I may get killed in battle.” Clark survived the war, however, and reunited with her mother upon her return home. She also defeated the demons of her past troubled life and remarried.39

Chapter 7 CHICKASAW BAYOU

“We are going to have a big battle,” Almeda Hart, alias “James Strong,” 127th Illinois Infantry

While Mary Ann Clark missed the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou, December 26–29, 1862, there were other women who participated in the first major engagement to capture Vicksburg. One was twenty-five-year-old Almeda Butler Hart who was living in DeKalb County, Illinois, at the outbreak of the war with her mother, younger brother, and husband of two years. When Henry enlisted in the 127th Illinois Infantry, Company F, in August 1862, Almeda went with him. However, four months later as the unit prepared to journey south from Memphis, she was distressed to learn that Sherman had ordered that women accompanying the unit would not be allowed to proceed beyond Helena, Arkansas. But the spirited Almeda had no intentions of allowing herself to become separated from her husband, so she decided to disguise herself as a man in order to stay with him. Henry was a blacksmith for Brigadier General David Stuart’s brigade while his wife served as a courier.1 Another woman soldier who participated in the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou was Soldier Tom with Thielemann’s Illinois Cavalry Battalion of Brigadier General Frederick Steele’s division. She had previously served as a teamster with the 45th Illinois Infantry, but following the siege of Corinth, she left the Lead Mine Regiment for unknown reasons and joined an Illinois cavalry unit. Research reveals that this unit was likely Thielemann’s Illinois Cavalry Battalion. In a post-war article appearing in the Daily Standard on April 30, 1870, the reporter noted without providing a timeline or sequence that Soldier Tom had served for over nine months 100

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Almeda Butler Hart. Disguised as “James Strong,” she fol-

Almeda’s husband, Henry Hart, Co. F, 127th Illinois

lowed her husband, Henry, to war and served as a mounted

Infantry. He served as a blacksmith for General David

courier for General David Stuart’s brigade during the Battle

Stuart’s brigade and died of a heart condition in 1863.

of Chickasaw Bayou. Private collection of the Halstead fam-

Private collection of the Halstead family, Pecatonica,

ily, Pecatonica, Illinois.

Illinois.

in the 45th Illinois Infantry and fifteen months in an unnamed Illinois cavalry unit. The article also stated that she was at the siege of Corinth and was on duty during the Vicksburg Campaign before transferring east to Chattanooga with Major General Francis Blair. Since the 45th Illinois Infantry was not involved in the Chattanooga Campaign, this means she would have had to have served with the 45th Illinois first and then the Illinois cavalry unit during the Vicksburg and Chattanooga Campaigns. The only Illinois cavalry unit involved in both campaigns was Thielemann’s battalion. The unit was also at Corinth along with the 45th Illinois, which is where Soldier Tom likely made the switch. A twenty-seven-year-old female German immigrant from Altenburg also participated in the battle at the bayou with Steele. Known only by her male alias, “Charles Junghaus,” she enlisted in Company E of the 3rd Missouri Infantry at St. Louis on August 18, 1861. She was a fivefoot-five-inch-tall farmer with brown hair and eyes.2 On December 21,

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1862, Junghaus and her comrades boarded the steamer Dacotah, one of approximately seventy transports chugging down the Mississippi River from Memphis with Admiral David Dixon Porter’s gunboats en route to the Yazoo River and thence to Vicksburg. “It was a grand sight that inspired us all with the greatest confidence of success,” stated Sergeant Major Edward P. Reichhelm, a compatriot of Junghaus in the 3rd. As a matter of fact, some even expressed a fear that the massive Federal fleet would frighten the Confederates into “skedaddling,” thereby depriving the eager Yankees of a fight. The voyage was far from uneventful, however. Along the way, the expedition periodically drew enemy fire to which Sherman responded by landing a detachment that dealt their revenge by burning houses, plantations, and villages. Junghaus, Reichhelm, and the rest of their comrades gazed at the river bank alight with fiery structures. The sergeant major described the scene as beautiful but horrible and condemned the act as “deplorable and disgusting.” He added, “The wanton destruction of houses and splendid farms—not being a ‘military necessity’ but originating merely in a thirst of vengeance, and a licentious desire to sack and burn, filled me with sorrow.” The depressing and anxious situation soon turned festive, however, as Sherman’s soldiers celebrated the Christmas season. Junghaus, Reichhelm and the Germans of the 3rd Missouri Infantry sang, shared tobacco, and listened to the officers give slurred speeches fueled by whiskey punch. The sergeant major’s thoughts soon turned to bygone Christmases and mused over the hard life of a soldier, a life that, at that point, Junghaus herself may have been questioning.3 Why should she continuously put forth the painstaking effort of assuming a fake persona in order to risk her life for a society that did not want her service? It was a question other women soldiers undoubtedly pondered at some point. Meanwhile, Almeda celebrated the holiday with Henry and their comrades by partaking of a nice dinner. Though she enjoyed being with her husband, her thoughts nevertheless turned to her mother, and she wondered how she was spending the holiday without her daughter and son-in-law. The Harts felt a pang of homesickness, as did countless others on both sides that Christmas of 1862, which proved to be the last for many. With the holiday over, cheerful hearts turned sullen as soldiers redirected their attention back to the task at hand. The transports of Sherman’s expedition departed the Mississippi River and turned into the

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Yazoo, bringing them nearer to their final destination. Aboard the steamer, Westmoreland, then moored in the river, Almeda wrote her mother on the eve of battle, “We are within 4 miles of Vickesburg and are going to land and attack this evening. . . . They are making all preparations for a battle. This morning the enemy is seen in large numbers on every side . . .” She informed her mother that she was in more eminent danger than Henry but would take good care of herself during the impending engagement. After all, she was armed with “two good braces of pistols and a sabre.” She closed by imploring her mother to “write soon to James Strong, for that is my name now.”4 As Almeda Hart, Soldier Tom, Charles Junghaus, and their fellow soldiers disembarked from their crowded, filthy, reeking transports near Captain W. H. Johnson’s plantation, they stepped foot into a ghastly environment that seemed surreal to them. They were Midwesterners and more accustomed to flat prairie land than the dank bayous that sprawled before them. One of their comrades observed, “The swamps are . . . silent and dismal-looking . . . The valley is covered with a rank growth of timber, underbrush and creeping vines. The limbs of the trees are covered with gray Spanish moss that hangs in different lengths from every twig.” Another soldier mentioned the thick cane that grew along the bayou and that “sloughs strayed through the forest; there was black mire around cypress and magnolia and oak.” To compound the misery of the melancholic environment, Sherman’s troops spent a wretched night in a cold, piercing rain with very little to offer them comfort. Military officials had ordered the baggage to remain aboard the transports and forbade the building of fires after they disembarked. With nothing to combat the elements, Junghaus and her comrades of the 3rd Missouri, “soaken wet and blue with frost,” languished in a cornfield that night. Some fell ill and two of them died as a result.5 The following morning, December 27, the survivors boarded their transports, floated back up the Yazoo River, disembarked, and skirmished with the Confederates throughout the day. As the morning of December 28 dawned, cold and foggy, Almeda was busy delivering correspondence to the regiments of Stuart’s brigade as they reconnoitered toward the Indian Mound. The female courier faced many challenges during this mission, one of which was ensuring she delivered the messages to the correct commands. No less than four officers bore the surname of Smith, two divisional commanders, one brigade, and one

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A wartime sketch showing the position of General Morgan L. Smith’s division at Chickasaw Bayou. Almeda Hart’s brigade was a part of this division. Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Vol. 3, p. 462, by Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel, 1888, courtesy the British Library via Flickr Commons.

regimental. As Almeda galloped fiercely across the field, carrying her vital correspondence, she drew fire, as did her brigade, from the Confederates who were entrenched within their rifle pits. Interestingly, among them appeared to be black soldiers. Stuart noted in his report that “the enemy, and especially their armed negroes, did dare to rise and fire, and did serious execution upon our men.” In addition to Stuart, another Federal officer witnessed black Confederates at Chickasaw Bayou. Specifically, he saw them shooting down troops from Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky of Colonel John F. DeCourcy’s brigade. Furthermore, a correspondent with the New York Daily Herald reported, “It is certain that negroes are fighting here, though probably only as sharpshooters.” A modern historian has suggested that these black Confederate soldiers were actually white Louisianans who had darker complexions as a result of their Cajun and French-Canadian heritages.6 Meanwhile, the 3rd Missouri in Brigadier General Charles E. Hovey’s brigade of Brigadier General Frederick Steele’s fourth division commenced a probing attack in the face of withering fire between Blake’s Levee at Thompson Lake but were repulsed in a tightly packed position by the 46th Mississippi and artillery fire. Junghaus, Reichhelm, and their comrades of the 3rd Missouri withdrew to a cornfield near the river bank,

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Union soldier sitting on the bank of Chickasaw Bayou, February 1864, a little over a year after at least three women soldiers participated in the vicious battle fought there. Library of Congress, LC-DIG-cwpb-01014.

where they spent the night waiting to board transports and head across Chickasaw Bayou. The furrows served as a bed and pillow to the weary soldiers, who slumbered soundly until a bugler sounded reveille at 3 a.m. the following morning, December 29. On that day, Sherman ordered his divisions to assault the bluffs all along the lines in an effort to break the Confederate center. However, the swamps and terrain produced a funneling effect, forcing the blue-clad soldiers into a narrow front, which exposed them to a greater concentration of Confederate fire. The result was a bloody failure. Fortunately for Almeda, Stuart’s 4th brigade was held in reserve, but she still faced danger as she remained in communication with the other units. Junghaus, Reichhelm, and the Germans of the 3rd Missouri also missed the main attack because Hovey’s brigade was still disembarking near Chickasaw Bayou. However, as soon as they caught up with the rest of their division at Mrs. Annie Lake’s plantation, Steele ordered them to attack the bluffs using the same disastrous route that Brigadier General Frank P. Blair’s brigade had taken from the east side of the bayou. Marching at the double quick, Junghaus and her comrades of the 3rd Missouri reached to within a mile of the bluffs when they halted. There, the female fighter stood deep in thought, pondering the task at hand as a

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host of terrified and wounded men from Blair’s beaten brigade streamed around her heading to the rear. Among the corn furrows lay scores of others. Junghaus gazed in horror at the morbid, discouraging spectacle and began to fear that she would soon share a similar fate. Her heart pounded. While the skills she learned on a Midwestern farm prepared her for life as a soldier, she and her comrades were out of their element deep in the Mississippi swamps, which had already proven difficult to navigate. And now in order to reach the Confederates who were entrenched at the bluffs of the Walnut Hills, they were going to have to negotiate an obstacle course consisting of abatis, trees and vines, swamps and bayous, and then cross an open plateau. Junghaus and her compatriots were well aware of the daunting challenge that awaited them. Suddenly, her file mate’s shove to her back snapped her out of her reverie. The German Missourians were again moving forward and continued onward until they were within half a mile from the bluffs. They halted once more. The woman soldier again observed her surroundings. There were more dead and wounded strewn about in the trees and bushes. As she and the others waited with a deep and foreboding sense of dread the order to march, a torrential storm assaulted the combatants with a cold, drenching rain. Even though they were miserable, they would at least live to see another day as Sherman had postponed the assault. Junghaus and her companions bivouacked for the night under arms. Military officials forbade campfires, and since all the baggage was back on the river bank, the woman soldier and the others suffered another relentlessly cold night with nothing more than their coats and trousers protecting them from the biting gale and rain. The wailing wind intermingled with the cries of their wounded lying about them, which intensified the discomfort that burdened the Germans of the 3rd Missouri. “Soaked through and through, we stood in our position all night,” Corporal John T. Buegel of the 3rd recorded in his diary. “This night was the longest for me during the entire war.”7 The coming of night brought forth dark thoughts regarding their pitiable and perilous situation. “There we stood,” reported Sergeant Major Reichhelm, “leaning against a tree or stump in silent resignation to our fate. Not a word was uttered.” Another Missourian, Lieutenant Henry A. Kircher of the 12th Regiment, feared that “nobody would easily come through alive.” However, as fate would have it, the soldiers of Hovey’s brigade were spared from facing this bloody

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The imposing heights of Chickasaw Bluffs. Photographed in February 1864, the hills were Sherman’s goal because the city of Vicksburg lies on the other side. Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-32797.

and hopeless trial as Sherman once again recalled them at the last minute. The Federals made no further advances. The battle at the bayou was over. It was a resounding Confederate victory and a dismal Federal failure. A defeated Reichhelm praised the bravery of his fellow soldiers while criticizing Sherman for his haphazard and uncoordinated attempt to assault the imposing heights of the Walnut Hills. “He . . . stands convicted by every soldier of his Army . . . of gross and unexplainable mismanagement of his own plans.” Lieutenant Kircher of the 12th Missouri was convinced that “200,000 men wouldn’t take the forts from that side, for they could hardly climb the hill even if there were no enemy there.” He continued to pour out his bitterness in his lengthy letter to his mother, “It was complete madness of Sherman . . . he would have just sacrificed us all, because Mr. Sherman believed that he could take Vicksburg with

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such a handful of men before Grant or Banks would think of it. Then he would be the great hero.”8 The dissatisfaction the Missouri comrades felt with their officers intensified on the journey back to Memphis when Sergeant Major Reichhelm of Junghaus’s 3rd Regiment was ordered to send a detail ashore in rain and hail to cut wood to fuel the steamship. Already aggravated, the chore further irritated the demoralized soldiers to the point where they were on the verge of open mutiny. However, Reichhelm was able to coax them into completing the task with a “little swearing and a few arrests.”9 Undoubtedly, the Mississippi swamps proved to be nothing but a source of consternation for Charles Junghaus, Soldier Tom, and Almeda Hart who both eagerly left the dark memories behind them as they journeyed back north on their troop transports. During the trip, however, they were ordered to Arkansas Post, where they participated in the capture of Fort Hindman, January 10–11, 1863. Junghaus and Soldier Tom would return to the Magnolia State a few months later. As for Almeda, she promised to write her mother again at the conclusion of the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou. But if any subsequent letters still exist, they remain undiscovered. A few months after Arkansas Post, she returned home to DeKalb County, Illinois. But she did so without her husband. Not all soldiers died gloriously on Civil War battlefields. Such is the case of Henry Hart, who died at Young’s Point, Louisiana, of pericarditis, which is a heart condition. There, in the regimental hospital, he slipped away from his wife, Almeda, on March 3, 1863, thereby breaking the loving ties that bound them together in life. He is buried in Vicksburg National Cemetery, section A, grave 3117. Descendants of the family claim that Almeda remarried. However, research has failed to determine who her second husband was or further details of her life.10 Almeda Hart may not have been the only woman to accompany Brigadier General David Stuart into the Mississippi swamps. A descendant who had preserved Hart’s missive to her mother wrote at the bottom, “This letter is from Alvin S. Butler’s sister. The general’s daughter and herself were dressed in boys clothes.” Assuming the general is David Stuart, the daughter likely would have been Marion who was seventeen years old at the time of the battle.11 However, this brief notation written by an unknown descendant of Almeda’s brother years after the war is the sole source for the claim of the general’s daughter dressing in boys

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clothing. Nothing else is known about her, whether she played an active role in the battle, or whether she was positively there at all. Before entering the Mississippi swamps, the fortunes of Almeda Hart, Charles Junghaus, and Soldier Tom, along with their male comrades, started on a high note as indicated by Almeda. “[I]f the troops all have as much courage as they do now appear to have we will in all probability gain the day,” she wrote. However, her prediction would not come to fruition. The Battle of Chickasaw Bayou had been costly in casualties and for no gain, forcing Sherman to abandon his expedition. Several days after the battle, he sat at a desk aboard the steamer Forest Queen to compose a report detailing his movements on the river. The dejected general opened his account with a concise and blunt statement regarding his mission to the Walnut Hills. “I reached Vicksburg at the time appointed, landed, assaulted, and failed.”12

Chapter 8 PORT GIBSON TO BIG BLACK

“A terrible and most sanguinary conflict.”

The year 1862 ended with Vicksburg still in Confederate possession. But the new year saw new attempts to take the river city. In order to carry out his objectives, Grant brought in more troops to the state. And with them, came more women soldiers hidden within their ranks. These new troops, along with Grant’s veterans, eventually succeeded in investing Vicksburg. Instead of directly assaulting the city, the Federals marched southward past the stronghold on the Louisiana side of the river and began to cross at Bruinsburg on April 30, 1863. It was the largest amphibious operation in US history until World War II.1 While Grant was preparing for the crossing, Private William A. McGee of the 18th Missouri Infantry (US) penned a letter from Corinth about a unique prisoner they had captured in the area. “Said prisoner is a nice, smart, shrewd little women. She is as good a soldier as we have ever came across.”2 McGee did not mention any more details about her other than she was serving with her husband. Her ultimate fate, like her identity, is unknown. While the men of the 18th Missouri were trying to figure out what to do with their spirited Confederate female fighter in Corinth, Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton was attempting to determine Grant’s course of action, which, at this point, was crossing the Mississippi River. Once the task was complete, Union forces headed towards Port Gibson. One of the soldiers who marched through the night of April 29 to the crossing point with the 24th Iowa Infantry of Colonel James Slack’s brigade, Brigadier General Alvin P. Hovey’s twelfth division was a woman. At sunrise the 110

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following day, she and her male comrades stacked arms and prepared breakfast. However, they were never able to enjoy it as cannonading and musket fire interrupted their meal. The irritated Hawkeyes begrudgingly made their way to the stacks of arms as officers barked orders for them to fall in to line. With grumbling stomachs, the Hawkeyes marched about half a mile, halted, and unslung their knapsacks, leaving them in a pile under the watchful eye of a guard. As the bugler played the call for “attention,” anxious troops reformed the ranks. Officers again ordered them forward, and they marched another half a mile before the female fighter and her fellow soldiers of the 24th Iowa halted again, stacked arms in a hollow, and nervously waited for orders.3 The newspaper reporter who shared her story in the Wyoming (Iowa) Journal on March 24, 1871, called the Iowa woman, “Smith . . . for the sake of convenience . . . although that is far from the real name.” Her first name was Mary, and it is unknown which male alias she answered when the first sergeant called the roll, an event that occurred approximately seven times a day.4 The reporter described her as a “large sized, hearty looking girl.” Before the war, she and her family resided in Ohio until the fall of 1861, when her father moved them to northern Iowa. Mary, however, stayed behind and worked in the kitchen of a farmer. The following year, she left to join her family in their new home, but after arriving in the river town of Muscatine, Iowa, in September, her spirit of adventure usurped her desire to reach her family, and she changed course. There, she acquired and donned male attire, burned her feminine clothing, and enlisted in the 24th Iowa Infantry at the age of eighteen, unbeknownst to any of her family or friends who undoubtedly would not have approved of her rash decision to overstep the bounds of propriety. Parents of boys withheld their consent for different reasons. Specifically, the fear of camp vices kept some of the younger recruits out of the service. However, the formation of the 24th Iowa Infantry gave parents cause to no longer hesitate in offering their sons to the service of their country. Known as the “Temperance Regiment,” most of the soldiers in this unit came from a Methodist background and promised to abstain from imbibing alcohol. The colonel, Eber C. Bynum, and five captains were ministers. Sons of ministers headed two more companies. Unsurprisingly, members of the unit held frequent religious services, which Mary likely attended. Corporal Levi L. Hoag noted in his diary on April 12, 1863, one particular meeting

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held aboard the steamer, Frank Steel, which was carrying the pious soldiers down the Mississippi River. Ironically, the preacher that day was Captain Jacob B. Casebeer of Company D.5 As the 24th Iowa ventured south, Mary’s new comrades began to grow suspicious of her beardless face and feminine appearance. Yet she was never discovered. Mary simply appeared to be one of the many youths who enlisted, to which her male compatriots ultimately attributed her smooth countenance. And their misgivings about her eased over time. As a matter of fact, Smith’s devotion to duty as well as her proficiency in cooking and nursing sick soldiers quickly rendered her a favorite among officers and enlisted men alike. Her nursing skills would soon be called upon when Colonel Bynum ordered the 24th Iowa forward at the double quick to meet the enemy near Magnolia Church in the vicinity of Port Gibson, where the heavily outnumbered Confederates, unprepared for the Bruinsburg crossing, attempted to halt the Federal advance. Fighting began around the A. K. Shaifer house on May 1, 1863, and commenced over broken terrain interspersed with high loess hills. Deep hollows and ravines covered in cane brakes and other growth rendered movement and unit cohesion extremely difficult. Though the 24th Iowa was held in reserve for most of the battle, the physical exertion from negotiating the arduous terrain throughout the day while in a weakened state from a lack of food proved to be a grueling challenge for Smith and the other soldiers. Corporal Hoag succinctly stated after the battle, “We had a tough time of it.”6 During the ensuing action, Mary Smith’s division overran Brigadier General Martin L. Green’s brigade on the Rodney Road, thereby forcing a series of Confederate withdrawals. And then later in the afternoon, Confederate Brigadier General John S. Bowen received reinforcements from Colonel Francis Cockrell’s Missouri Brigade, which he deployed in an effort to prevent a Federal flanking movement. Cockrell, who had assumed command of the brigade a couple of weeks prior, had just come from Grand Gulf, where his troops had served as a garrison force and fought off an onslaught from Admiral David Dixon Porter’s gunboats on April 29, 1863. But Bowen needed the Missourians at Port Gibson, and they moved in quick time to the battlefield, where two of Cockrell’s regiments, the 3rd and 5th Missouri, smashed Colonel James L. Slack’s brigade, of which the 24th Iowa was a part. Fortunately for Mary and

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Corporal Hoag, Slack had ordered their unit to the rear and extreme left of the line to support Major General John “Black Jack” Logan’s hotly engaged division. When they arrived, they found themselves fourth in line with three other regiments in front of them. As a result, they saw limited action and, therefore, escaped the mauling the rest of their comrades in the brigade received at the hands of Cockrell.7 The unnamed woman with Cockrell’s brigade was among his Missourians, though the extent of her involvement in the battle is unknown because research has yet to reveal to which regiment she belonged. If she was with the 1st Missouri, she was guarding a crossing on Bayou Pierre during the battle while the 2nd Missouri was posted on the riverfront. The 6th Missouri, which arrived from Grand Gulf with Cockrell, was ordered to support Green’s brigade. In the afternoon, Colonel Eugene Erwin advanced the regiment without orders and succeeded in driving the Federals back. But the 6th conducted this charge without support, and Erwin had to make a feint in order to save his regiment from destruction or capture. Meanwhile, Cockrell slammed Slack with the 3rd and 5th Regiments. But the advance soon broke down because of Federal superiority in artillery and manpower. Overwhelmed, Bowen ordered an evacuation of Port Gibson.8 Regardless of which regiment the Missouri woman was in, she was involved with the Battle of Port Gibson, as was Mary Smith. The Missouri and Iowa women would meet each other again. The Union victory at Port Gibson signaled the beginning of the end for Vicksburg. Following the battle, Mary Smith and the rest of the Federal forces left the town Corporal Hoag referred to as “a very pretty place indeed” and began making their way inland towards the heart of the state. Instead of moving north to the river city, Grant initially angled northeastward in order to cut off Confederate access to railroads and supplies. The Federals themselves had established a supply base at Grand Gulf. As Charles Junghaus and her comrades in the 3rd Missouri Infantry of Sherman’s corps pushed east along the Port Gibson-Raymond Road, they encountered resistance at Fourteen Mile Creek on May 12, 1863. To hinder the Federal pursuit, Confederates burned the bridge spanning the creek forcing the bluecoats of Woods’s brigade to wade to the other side. As she splashed up to the bank, Junghaus noticed one of her comrades leave the ranks and dash towards a badly wounded Confederate soldier. Tenderly kneeling at his side, the Missouri Yankee attempted to comfort

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him. Later, Junghaus, Reichhelm, and their compatriots learned that the two were brothers, whose fates had taken them into opposing armies.9 The same day, Confederate Brigadier General John Gregg clashed with Major General James B. McPherson’s XVII Corps at Raymond. After the Union victory there, Grant received a report that Lieutenant General Joseph E. Johnston was in Jackson, and, out of fear of being attacked from the rear, he decided to turn back eastward towards the capital and assault the Confederates there. With both McPherson and Sherman in the area, a heavily outnumbered Johnston realized the disparity of the situation and ordered a withdrawal. Meanwhile, he assigned Gregg the overwhelming task of defending the city until supplies, personnel, and government documents could be removed.10 The Federals began their advance from two directions, and on the morning of May 14, 1863, assaulted the Confederate works west and south of Jackson. However, Johnston, more concerned with the evacuation, put forth little resistance and withdrew to Canton after a brief but intense engagement. Upon the Union occupying the state capitol, Sherman’s troops commenced to looting and destroying it. Lieutenant Henry A. Kircher of the 12th Missouri observed, “All the soldiers stormed into Jackson, as they heard that there was no provost guard in the city, and began to plunder all the stores, just plain looting them. Whatever they couldn’t eat or use was trampled into the mud.” Junghaus and her comrades in the 3rd Missouri also contributed to the demolition of Jackson as noted by Corporal John T. Buegel, “All railroads for miles were torn up. All bridges, factories, in short, everything that belonged to the Confederacy was wrecked.” A number of structures were torched, those with military significance along with other buildings such as churches and hotels. Junghaus and her companions watched as fire enveloped the structures. “On the night from May 15th and 16th, the beautiful city of Jackson was in bright flames,” observed Buegel who also corroborated Kircher’s report of widespread looting.11 Following the fall of Jackson, Johnston sent a message to Pemberton for them to join forces at Clinton. Pemberton previously hesitated when receiving the same request because orders from President Jefferson Davis to remain in Vicksburg and hold the city at all cost conflicted with Johnston’s. Ultimately, he decided to move south in order to attack Grant’s supply trains based at Grand Gulf. However, a second order from Johnston

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Champion Hill, visible in the background behind the trees, was the location of brutal fighting in which two women soldiers, one in Cockrell’s brigade and the other in Slack’s, faced off against each other. Photo from 1905. From the collections of Dayton History.

prompted Pemberton to reverse course and join him. Meanwhile, Grant had secured a copy of Johnston’s communications by virtue of a spy and decided to attack Pemberton at Champion Hill before the two Confederate armies could meet.12 On May 16, 1863, the Federals opened fire. Two divisions charged up the hill amid murderous artillery and rifle fire. The Confederates counterattacked, and a violent seesaw action ensued throughout the day. With Major General John A. McClernand’s XIII Corps was Mary Smith of the 24th Iowa Infantry, whose baptism of fire came at Port Gibson. During the Battle of Champion Hill, also called Baker’s Creek, her regiment, part of Slack’s 2nd brigade, Hovey’s twelfth division, marched through thick underbrush, vines, ravines and hills to engage Brigadier General Alfred Cummings’s Georgians in ferocious hand-to-hand fighting at the crest of the hill before overrunning them. Continuing their advance over the hill, Slack’s four regiments next focused on Captain James F. Waddell’s Alabama Battery. On approaching the guns at the vital crossroads, one of Mary’s comrades in the 24th Iowa recalled suddenly seeing the enemy

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battery “and at the same instant the horrid howling of grape and canister is about us.” Determined to return in kind, the Iowans halted and fired, their “Enfields add[ing] their clamor to the hell of sound, and their missiles to the many that make the very air writhe.” Waddell’s brave artillerymen vainly tried to save their cannons as the Hawkeyes overran their position at bayonet point leaving the dead in their wake. The guns and the vital crossroads were in the hands of the Iowans. Flush with adrenaline from his unit’s triumph, one of Smith’s fellow soldiers of the 24th Iowa gloated, “The battery is ours and fairly won.” The Hawkeye success, however, was short lived as Brigadier General John Bowen’s division slammed them with a counterattack led by Colonel Francis Cockrell. One soldier of the Missouri Brigade recalled him rallying his men before making the spectacular charge, “In one hand he held the reins and a large magnolia flower while with the other he waved his sword and gave the order to charge.” Shouting in defiance, the nameless woman soldier and her comrades of Cockrell’s brigade lunged forward, racing towards their foe at the double quick with their bayonets gleaming in the sun. The determined charge of the Missourians slowed only to clear a fence in front of them. A member of the 3rd Regiment recalled how they dealt with the obstacle, “Our boys took hold of the bottom rail . . . lifted it clear of the ground and threw it twenty or thirty feet.” With the way once again open, the female fighter and her comrades continued their spirited advance while directing volley upon volley towards the Yankees in front of them. She and her companions soon used all forty rounds in their cartridge boxes. And since the ordinance wagons had been sent to the rear, they had to gather ammunition from the dead and dying, friend and foe alike, who were lying about them. The woman soldier hastily stuffed the cartridges in her box and pockets and continued firing. Some of her comrades ended up discharging from seventy-five to ninety rounds in the hour that it took to make the charge. Ironically, the Missouri Brigade drove the Federals back so far that the attackers could see the enemy’s ordnance train ahead of them, the teamsters frantically whipping the horses into flight from the oncoming Confederates.13 During the charge, the anonymous woman of Cockrell’s brigade once again faced Mary Smith of the 24th Iowa. And just like in their previous meeting at Port Gibson, the Missourians smashed Slack’s brigade, of which the 24th Iowa was a part. While Smith and her fellow Hawkeyes

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fortunately evaded the thrashing the rest of their brigade took at Port Gibson by virtue of Slack moving them to another position in the line, they were not so lucky at Champion Hill. Cockrell drove them and the rest of Hovey’s division back across the crest of the hill and beyond, recapturing Waddell’s Battery in the process. The Hawkeyes fought gallantly but paid a hefty price, suffering a casualty rate of over 45 percent.14 Smith miraculously escaped this tally. After witnessing the mauling of his brigade, Colonel Slack declared the Battle of Champion Hill a “terrible and most sanguinary conflict, which, in point of terrific fierceness and stubborn persistency, finds but few parallels in the history of civilized warfare.” Meanwhile, Mary’s divisional commander, Alvin P. Hovey, coined the sobriquet for which the rise came to be known: “the hill of death.”15 While the Federals reeled, Cockrell’s brigade continued its rampage. In advance of support, the Missouri woman and her male compatriots drove a wedge so deep into the Union line that they soon found themselves surrounded on three sides with no option other than to abandon the ground that they had so ferociously taken. But they had bought their Confederate comrades time to withdraw and head towards Vicksburg. With Champion Hill securely in Union possession, the Federals reorganized and pursued Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton’s forces westward to the Big Black River bridge, where the Confederates were entrenched on the east side of the river. Among the gray-clad soldiers who sank wearily into the rifle pits around midnight was the unknown Missouri woman of Cockrell’s brigade which anchored the extreme Confederate right bordering Gin Lake. In the morning of May 17, the woman soldier and other members of Bowen’s division munched on hard crackers and lay quietly in the trenches, which they had augmented with cotton bales, while anxiously contemplating their fate for the day. Action commenced when both sides exchanged artillery fire followed by the blue lines of infantry making a three-minute charge, which dislodged Brigadier General John C. Vaughn’s Tennesseans at the Confederate center between Green’s brigade and the Vicksburg and Jackson Railroad. Cockrell, manning the Confederate right on the other side of the tracks, realized the peril. “I watched this disorderly falling back a few moments, when I saw that the enemy had possession of the trenches north of the railroad, and were rapidly advancing toward the bridge, our

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Big Black River, February 1864. A woman soldier was killed in the battle here in 1863. Library of Congress, LC-DIG-cwpb-00519.

only crossing and way of escape, the enemy now being nearer this crossing than my line. I therefore ordered the brigade to fall back.”16 The female fighter and her Missouri comrades made a long, hard, mile-long dash to the railroad bridge which had been planked over to provide them with a means of escape. In addition, the steamer, Dot, moored south of the bridge and positioned slightly northwest by southwest, also served as a pontoon for the fleeing Confederates. After all of the gray-clad soldiers in sight were across, the Big Black River bridge and Dot were fired in order to disrupt the Union chase. In addition to Dot, the Confederates also burned the steamers Paul Jones, Bufort, and Charm, the latter having carried prisoner-of-war Mary Ann Clark to Vicksburg, where she was exchanged five months prior. Now the Rebels rendered it and the other vessels useless in order to keep them out of the hands of the pursuing Federals. Not all of the Confederates made it safely across the river before the bridges were fired. As the woman soldier stood on the west bank, she realized that some of her Southern comrades had been cut off and forced to swim in order to rejoin their respective commands. Others drowned in the attempt while approximately seventeen hundred fell into the hands of the enemy. Also left behind in the abandoned trenches on the east bank of Big Black River was a young Confederate woman killed during the engagement. She would have been one of Green’s Arkansans or Vaughn’s Tennesseans. Although it is difficult to pinpoint the exact action which led

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Vicksburg, Mississippi, 1861. Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-35296.

to the death of this unknown female fighter, she likely fell when Brigadier General Michael K. Lawler’s brigade of mostly Iowans fired upon the Confederate works, which partially led to the rout. The Hawkeyes poured into the abandoned trenches in pursuit. And there they discovered her. She was lying face up, her eyes fixed with a stony stare. The blue-clad soldiers made a grave near the works where she might rest and gently placed her therein. After learning of the account, likely from fellow Iowans, the event inspired Private Henry Clinton Parkhurst of the 16th Iowa Infantry to later compose a poem about the incident.17 A despondent Pemberton reflected on this latest defeat, his musings a foreshadowing of events that would contribute to the ultimate Confederate defeat, “Just thirty years ago I began my military career . . . and today . . . that career is ended in disaster and disgrace.”18 He then ordered his forces to retreat to Vicksburg, the “Gibraltar of the Confederacy,” which President Davis commanded to be held at all hazard.

Chapter 9 THE MAY ASSAULTS

“Swept away as Chaff thrown from the hand on a windy day . . . ”

The Federals steadily marched to Vicksburg and the waiting Confederates who were heavily entrenched. Upon reaching the outskirts of the fortified city, Grant ultimately ordered two assaults to dislodge them, one on May 19, 1863, and the other on the 22nd. The initial foray was hasty, haphazard, and fruitless, resulting in a high casualty rate. The second attempt was well coordinated but still failed. The May assaults embodied one of the war’s greatest ironies. Perhaps at no other time was the tragic paradox of “brother versus brother” best illustrated than when opposing Missourians faced each other at Vicksburg. And standing next to the Missouri men in the ranks were Missouri women. On the Confederate side was the anonymous woman with Cockrell’s brigade which defended Stockade Redan on Graveyard Road. From their position inside the fort on May 22, the female fighter and her comrades watched as the “dark masses rolled forward to the onslaught.”1 In advance of the main attacking force was a detachment of 150 soldiers who volunteered for a suicide mission. Dubbed the “forlorn hope,” the doomed squad was tasked with carrying ladders and planks across a quarter of a mile of open field in the face of withering Confederate fire to cross a ditch in front of the fort and scale the parapet. Amazingly, some managed to scramble their way up the steep slope of the stockade. Gazing down at them were the woman soldier and her Confederate Missouri comrades who took aim at their Federal foes. Among those in their sights were fellow Missourians of the 6th and 8th Regiments, part of Major General Frank Blair’s division. 120

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In one of the other Federal Missouri units at Vicksburg was the German woman known as Charles Junghaus of the 3rd Infantry, which was part of Colonel Charles R. Woods’s brigade of Steele’s division, Sherman’s corps. After arriving at the outskirts of the city, she and her comrades constructed earthworks and continued to strengthen them. To further protect themselves, they also dug holes in the side of a hill to shield themselves from the incessant shelling coming from Fort Hill near the Mississippi River. Corporal Buegel remarked that their efforts nevertheless failed to provide adequate shelter. For some, the earth that once protected them received their corpse. Such was the case of their ensign who lost his head while he sat reading a newspaper in his hole. On the same day, May 22, Buegel, Junghaus, and the rest of Woods’s brigade marched over three miles to assault a fort on the top of a hill heavily defended by the 26th Louisiana Infantry. In order to reach their position, they had to dash across several open fields, which the Confederates raked with cannon and rifle fire, in addition to crossing ravines while negotiating brush and logs. After Steele’s division reached the base of the hill in the late afternoon, the 3rd Missouri began an approach to the left of Brigadier General John M. Thayer’s brigade. Junghaus and her comrades watched in horror as other brigades in the division made three bloody attempts to reach the top of the hill and dislodge the Confederates. Buegel, Junghaus, and the rest of the 3rd advanced half-way up the steep slope in support. Some even came within ten or fifteen paces of the Confederate rifle pits, but the Federal attack ultimately stalled and failed because of arduous terrain and heavy enemy fire. “The fire was redoubled, and it was impossible to get forward or backward,” recalled Buegel. He, Junghaus, and their Yankee comrades of Woods’s brigade were trapped on the side of the hill. “It was a slaughter, and it is a wonder that the whole division was not destroyed on the spot,” continued Buegel. Fortunately for him, Junghaus, and their compatriots, they were able to slip away under the cover of darkness back to their original position.2 Describing the two May assaults to his wife, Sherman wrote that soldiers were “swept away as Chaff thrown from the hand on a windy day.” Corporal Buegel simply called it murder and mused that “the common soldier does not ascertain who is responsible.” Another German Missourian in Woods’s brigade placed the blame of the failed charge squarely on his corps commander. Still bitter from the similar stinging

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Shirley House and the bombproof shelters that troops from General John A. Logan’s division excavated around it. Jennie Hodgers of the 95th Illinois bivouacked near them. Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-35298.

defeat at Chickasaw Bayou, Lieutenant Henry A. Kircher of the 12th Regiment sneered, “Why did not the great charger [Sherman] come and lead it himself.” It is quite apparent that by this point Kircher and other German Missourians, Junghaus undoubtedly included, were growing weary of playing the role of chaff tossed to the wind as Cump sent them to slaughter by hurling them at impregnable positions. “I believe the fellow [Sherman] is obsessed with storming or himself is always in a storm,” quipped Kircher.3 While Woods’s brigade had a tough assignment storming a hill at the Union right, Brigadier General Thomas E. G. Ransom’s brigade also saw considerable action during both May assaults while positioned at the center with Brigadier General John McArthur’s sixth division, McPherson’s corps. Among the soldiers involved was Jennie Hodgers, alias “Albert D. J. Cashier.” On May 19, she and her unit, the 95th Illinois Infantry, which had previously participated in Grant’s Central Mississippi Railroad Expedition the year before, charged across undulating terrain to the right of the Jackson Road near the Shirley House. With Colonel Thomas W. Humphrey commanding, the 95th crossed Glass Bayou and clambered up a steep hill while managing to weather enfilading artillery fire from the 3rd

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Louisiana Redan to close to within one hundred yards of the Confederate works, a position they held until nightfall when Ransom withdrew them under the cover of darkness. Three days later, the 95th negotiated a series of ravines filled with fallen timber and canebrakes to come within sixty yards of the Confederate fortifications before heavy enemy fire halted the charge. Like all of the other Federal units engaged, the Illinoisans accomplished nothing more than sustaining more casualties.4 Up until this point, Federal success in capturing Vicksburg had been as elusive as the details of Jennie Hodgers’s story. A discrepancy even existed regarding her name. In conversation with her lieutenant, Charles W. Ives, following her discovery many years after the war, she told him that her name was Georgia Hodges, which several newspaper reporters printed as Hughes. Little is known for certain about her antebellum life other than the fact that she was an illiterate Irish immigrant who eventually settled in Illinois. Most of the chronicles that circulated after the war about her past were varied and sometimes conflicting. One story claimed she came to the United States as a stowaway. Another source stated that she had a twin brother in Ireland and that her mother dressed her as a boy as well. Furthermore, she was born illegitimate and, as a child, worked for her uncle, who was a shepherd. Additional claims asserted that her mother married a man whose last name was Cashier and that they immigrated to New York, where her stepfather dressed her as a boy, dubbed her Albert, and procured jobs for both of them working in a shoe factory, which enabled the family to earn more money. Following the death of her mother, Hodgers moved west to Belvidere, Illinois, while maintaining her male identity. While historians have been unable to verify the validity of her stories, descendants of her alleged brother, Patrick Hodgers, declared that they found a record noting that she was born on Christmas Day, 1843, in Clogherhead, Ireland.5 The facts surrounding why, when, and how Jennie Hodgers left Ireland remain unsubstantiated. Regardless, the red haired, blue eyed immigrant arrived in the United States with no apparent ties to her new homeland and had to find means with which she could support herself, an endeavor she found easier to accomplish as a man due to the more abundant employment opportunities and higher wages available to Victorian men than to women. So, while dressed in male clothing and claiming the alias Albert Cashier, she worked as a farmer, laborer, and shepherd before the war.

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Therefore, when nineteen-year-old Hodgers enlisted in Company G of the 95th Illinois Infantry on August 3, 1862, she already had experience in passing as a man. Her adeptness at maintaining her disguise and a cursory medical exam ensured an uneventful entrance into the army. While regulations required recruits to submit to a physical inspection which called for an individual to strip, the pressure that surgeons and recruiting officers felt to fill the ranks sometimes superseded protocol. Therefore, underage boys, unhealthy men, and women alike benefitted from such lax entrance standards when they sought enlistment. One of Hodgers’s comrades testified that “a woman would not have had any trouble in passing the examination.” Another one explained that during the medical exam, “All that we showed was our hands and feet.” Sarah Emma Edmonds of the 2nd Michigan Infantry said that her examination consisted of nothing more than a surgeon inspecting one of her hands and asking about her profession, to which she replied that she spent her youth earning an education. Her answer was sufficient enough to pass her into the ranks as “Franklin Thompson” in 1861.6 For some medical personnel, incompetence, rather than negligence, apparently led them to overlook female recruits. For instance, one surgeon failed to detect Susan Jones even after he “sounded her breast.” A newspaper reporter later opined in an article appearing in the Holmes County (Ohio) Republican on May 23, 1861, that “perhaps he thought her full breast indicated robust health and a sound constitution.” After the close call, Jones mustered in to Company G of the 3rd Ohio Infantry (3 months unit) as “Robert Wilson.” However, her service came to an abrupt end approximately a month later when Colonel Isaac H. Marrow proved to be more observant than the surgeon. He noticed that Private Wilson was “too broad here, too long there, too full here, and entirely too short all over.” Sensing the young soldier was actually a woman, the colonel confronted Jones who admitted the ruse. Marrow then issued her an honorable discharge and sent her home to Columbus, Ohio.7 Some female recruits found ways to circumnavigate the medical exam altogether. Certain women who served as orderlies did not have to submit to a physical inspection because in some cases they were not formally enlisted soldiers. Frederick Elliott, surgeon of the 1st New York (Lincoln) Cavalry, testified that he had not examined Georgianna Weldon, alias “George Weldon,” because she had not been sworn into the service. Rather,

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she was employed as an orderly by the regimental non-commissioned officers.8 For women who were enlisted soldiers, some received assistance from men in getting into the ranks. Catharine Hill, a black woman, claimed that she paid a corrupt doctor $150 to pass her. The sizable sum for the time was likely the bounty she received for enlisting. Mary Davis took the place of her neighbor, who had already passed the medical exam after he was drafted. When he was injured in an accident, Davis implored him to allow her to report in his stead. He agreed, and so Mary merely put on his uniform, assumed his name, “Henry Brigedgettette,” and joined the ranks of the 68th Illinois Infantry with no difficulty.9 Similar to Mary Davis, a Pennsylvania woman sought to benefit from someone else taking the medical exam on her behalf. The sixteen-year-old attempted to enlist in a New York unit as “John Davis” by devising a plan which called for a male friend to submit to the examination, and then she would take the enlistment papers once he successfully passed. However, a soldier detected her on a train and reported her before she could put her scheme into effect.10 Not all women soldiers experienced a superficial medical exam. In some instances, thorough surgeons thwarted the plans of potential female fighters. Such is the case of a girl from Illinois who traveled to St. Louis, where she enrolled in an unnamed unit as a substitute. The article appearing in the Daily Post on December 22, 1864, claimed that everything went smoothly until she found herself in a precarious situation when the examining surgeon ordered her to strip per the regulations. Horrified, she fled the room as the directive did not agree with her sense of propriety. Fortunately for Jennie Hodgers, the condition of her hands and feet was sufficient to pass her into the ranks, and she was not subjected to the humiliating incident her fellow Illinoisan experienced. After clearing a major hurdle in beginning her military service, a relieved Private Cashier would make sure to avoid thoughtless mistakes that would certainly reveal the secret she had taken great care to sustain to that point. Such cannot be said of two other disguised women in Hodgers’s unit. According to Private Thomas Hannah, who was in the same company as Hodgers, a woman was discovered in the regiment while at Jackson, Tennessee, in November 1862. She had enlisted just before the unit left Camp Fuller in Rockford, Illinois. Hannah insinuated that this woman was a prostitute

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or at least that she possessed loose morals. As previously discussed, she may have been using the military as a means to escape the institution. Regardless of her motives, she was with the regiment for a little over a month and would have participated in drill and performed all of the same duties as her male comrades. While Hannah did not specify the means by which military officials discovered this woman, Lieutenant Charles Ives explained that feminine mannerisms betrayed yet one more woman of the 95th Illinois. She had followed a lover into the ranks of the 95th. When the colonel learned of her presence, he set out to find her so that he could send her home. Because he could not pick her out, he had several soldiers lined up and instructed them to catch apples that were thrown at them. The woman instinctively tried to catch hers with a non-existent apron. Though the colonel was unable to initially detect the woman, someone must have seen through her ruse from the beginning to report her. But according to Ives, “there was never a doubt about the fellow Cashier.”11 Her comrades testified that they never suspected her, despite the fact that they noticed that she never grew a beard. Even though Hodgers could do nothing about her lack of facial hair, she was attentive to the details she could control. While nothing is known definitively as to how women soldiers took care of their sanitary needs, it is reasonable to surmise that Hodgers and her fellow female compatriots sought privacy away from camp and the filthy latrines, also called sinks. A woman soldier would not have aroused suspicion by slipping quietly away to answer the call of nature since some of the men were forsaking the sinks as well. On the march, female soldiers would have been even less conspicuous when they darted towards nearby woods as their male comrades undoubtedly did. And they likely dealt with their monthly cycles the same private way. But for Hodgers and her fellow female fighters, it may not have been a problem with which they had to concern themselves after all. The physical demands of lengthy marches combined with poor diets likely rendered them amenorrheic, meaning that their cycles simply stopped.12 Georgianna Weldon, alias “George Weldon,” of the 1st New York Cavalry was not so fortunate. Quartermaster Sergeant Jesse Wyckoff testified that he was in the process of issuing clothing when he had to return to his tent to retrieve a book. There, he caught Weldon “making water.” Apparently, she had sought privacy in his tent to relieve herself and to change

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into her new clothing. When she retrieved her old ones, Wyckoff noticed “evident signs of a woman’s monthly courses.” Despite this revelation, he did not report her for reasons known only to him, and “George Weldon” continued to serve for the time being.13 By contrast, Jennie Hodgers was more careful and made sure that nobody ever saw her naked, whether she were taking care of her toilet needs or bathing. Soldiers, especially those on active campaign, rarely found opportunities to cleanse themselves anyway. When Confederate Mary Ann Clark and two other women soldiers arrived at Cairo, Illinois, as prisoners of war, a reporter noted in an article appearing in the Philadelphia Inquirer on December 10, 1862, that they were “unwashed like the others.” And when soldiers were able to wash, calculating women volunteers justified their reluctance to join the others under the pretext of a fear of the water and an inability to swim. Some female soldiers would not have had to make excuses since it would not have been uncommon for soldiers to cleanse themselves while clothed. According to Private Benjamin F. Marsh of the 8th Michigan Infantry, he and his comrades bathed with their clothes on, washing themselves and their garments at once. He wrote his mother, “We go right in wholl hay[,] or none pull off all our cloathes and sit right down in the stream.” Sergeant Hermann Weiss of the 6th New York Heavy Artillery explained that the same circumstances existed when soldiers retired for the night. “We never undress to go to bed,” he noted in a letter to his wife.14 Such is the reason why bunk mates undoubtedly never discovered the secret that women soldiers harbored. Sharing a cot was the only time Hodgers allowed herself in close proximity to a male while in the army, and that was begrudgingly, according to her compatriots. She remained aloof, which her comrades overlooked out of their admiration for her “military bearing and reckless daring.” Indeed, Private Cashier was “industrious” and could do “as much work as anyone in the company” despite the fact that, at five foot three inches, she was the smallest soldier among her compatriots.15 The skills that facilitated her success as a soldier stemmed from the valuable experience she gained from working masculine jobs before the war. So by the time she enlisted, she was already prepared to make a smooth transition from citizen to soldier. While her workplace skills provided her with a means to serve in the military, her motivation derived from an adventurous spirit. “I wanted excitement,” Hodgers explained to Lieutenant Ives after her secret was

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Jennie Hodgers, alias “Albert D.J. Cashier,” Company G, 95th Illinois Infantry, with a pard. Vicksburg National Military Park, https://www.nps.gov/vick/learn/education/upload/Albert%20Cashier.pdf

exposed years after the war. The Irish woman would certainly find adventure as a soldier. At Vicksburg, Confederates captured her at an outpost during a reconnaissance mission around the city. However, she managed to escape by grabbing her captor’s rifle and knocking him down with it before fleeing back to Union lines. It was also at Vicksburg where, according to her comrades, Hodgers climbed atop the works and taunted the Confederates.16

Chapter 10 THE SIEGE OF VICKSBURG

“The key.” Abraham Lincoln

After two failed assaults at Vicksburg, Hodgers and the rest of the Federal soldiers must have been relieved when Grant abandoned this strategy in favor of besieging the city. With Steele’s division was Charles Junghaus of the 3rd Missouri Infantry and Soldier Tom of Thielemann’s Illinois Cavalry Battalion, the latter unit serving reconnaissance and escort duty as well as acting as orderlies at the various headquarters in Sherman’s XV Corps during the siege.1 Joining the XIII Corps late was Mary Smith and the 24th Iowa Infantry of Hovey’s division, who had remained behind at Champion Hill to assist in taking care of the dead, wounded, and prisoners following the battle. Late in the siege, the 24th Iowa, part of Brigadier General George F. McGinnis’s brigade, made an approach toward the Square Fort and pushed forward until they were within thirty-five feet of the Confederate trenches at the time of the surrender.2 In order to “out camp” the Confederates, Grant ordered two divisions from the IX Corps serving in the eastern theater to Vicksburg. Sherman then sent the detachment, commanded by Major General John G. Parke, to fortify a line extending from Haynes Bluff to the railroad crossing at Big Black River. Holding this position until the surrender of Vicksburg was the 2nd Michigan Infantry of Colonel Daniel Leasure’s brigade, Brigadier General Thomas Welsh’s division. At least three women soldiers served in this regiment during the war. One was a twenty-four-year old Flint native named Jenny Lockwood who served in Company B. Another was 129

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an unnamed newlywed who followed her husband to war. Together, the couple fought at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Courthouse where her spouse fell with a broken arm from a piece of shell. Assisting him to safety, the young wife helped care for him, and when he had sufficiently healed, the couple returned home.3 The other was Sarah Emma Edmonds, who had fled an unwanted marriage, and enlisted as Franklin Thompson in Company F. By the time the 2nd Michigan transferred to Kentucky, the malaria she contracted while participating in the Peninsula Campaign in Virginia in 1862 worsened to the point that she began to fear for her life. Because medical attention would likely lead to her discovery, she applied for a leave of absence instead but was denied. With no other option to save her life and reputation, Edmonds deserted her unit near Lebanon, Kentucky, in April 1863, prior to the May assaults and siege of Vicksburg. She defended her actions by explaining, “Had I been what I represented myself to be, I should have gone to the hospital. . . . But being a woman I felt compelled to suffer in silence and endure it best I could, in order to escape detection of my sex. I would rather have been shot dead, than to have been known to be a woman and sent away from the Army under guard like a criminal.” Congress removed the desertion charge on July 3, 1886. Two years prior, President Chester A. Arthur signed a bill into law that granted Edmonds, now Seelye after her marriage, a pension for her service as a soldier in the Civil War.4 While Edmonds was seeking healing from her illness, Parke’s divisions, of which her 2nd Michigan Infantry was a part, were joined in Mississippi by a detachment of the XVI Corps commanded by Major General Cadwallader C. Washburn. Part of which included Brigadier General William Sooy Smith’s division. Arriving at Haynes Bluff on June 12, the detachment fortified the position at Oak Ridge until the end of the siege. Elizabeth Quinn was among the soldiers with Smith; although, there is some discrepancy as to which unit she was with. According to Captain Ira Bloomfield of the 26th Illinois, by the spring of 1863, when the 90th Illinois moved to Tennessee, Quinn had resumed wearing feminine apparel and thus accompanied the Irish Legion down the Mississippi River towards Vicksburg. It was at this point that Father Thomas Kelly, the unit’s chaplain, had her driven away from the regiment. Bloomfield claimed that she was unchaste. However, there is no evidence of Quinn

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behaving in such a manner. On the contrary, the Nashville Daily Union of October 9, 1862, noted that she was “spoken of as having a good character.” And in an article that appeared in the Memphis Bulletin on April 1, 1863, a soldier using the name of Cabrick noted that Quinn was “loved and respected by the entire regiment.” Colonel O’Meara himself believed her to be a “chaste girl, of pure motives.” Perhaps she and Kane began fighting as husbands and wives tend to do. This could explain why she never admitted to the newspaper reporters that she was serving with a husband. Or perhaps the officers of the 90th Illinois did not want her to endure the hardships of the impending siege. Another explanation involves Major Patrick Flynn who was in command of the 90th when Quinn was later captured and returned by the Confederates. He likely took a more traditional view that it would be shameful to knowingly allow a woman in the ranks. Furthermore, Flynn was at odds with military officials at the time over such issues as his promotion. In order to gain favor, he likely intended to show that the unit wanted nothing to do with Quinn, who he turned into a harlot to further justify her banishment from the unit prior to the siege of Vicksburg. Flynn could have also made up the story about sending Elizabeth away, and she actually remained with the Irish Legion.5 Regardless, Captain Bloomfield claimed Quinn departed the 90th Illinois, donned male attire once again, and joined the 97th Indiana Infantry, which was also part of Sooy Smith’s division. The captain based his account on information that Flynn was using to complete a report ordered by Grant. Flynn himself must have received the details of Quinn’s story from nurse Annie Wittenmyer who said she was “commissioned by officers to find out all [she] could about her” and that “the interview was a long one.” What she discovered leads credence to Quinn serving in another unit after departing the 90th Illinois. While Elizabeth was recuperating in a Nashville hospital from a wound, she told Wittenmyer that nobody in her regiment was aware of her identity. Assuming she told the nurse the truth, this indicates that she was serving with a new unit because the men of the 90th Illinois, including Colonel O’Meara, had been aware of her gender since their departure from Chicago for the front in the fall of 1862. Furthermore, Quinn indicated to Wittenmyer that she did not have a husband in the regiment. Surely, Wittenmyer would have noticed the wedding ring on Quinn’s hand in the photograph she purchased from her that she had made in Nashville. Apparently the

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nurse failed to perceive the discrepancy, which indicates Quinn had been serving with a different regiment other than the 90th Illinois when she was wounded and captured. Furthermore, the soldier of the 14th Illinois using the name of Cabrick said Elizabeth had married a mess mate, and Bloomfield identified him as Jerry Kane of Company G in the 90th Illinois. Private James Madison Jones of the 41st Indiana Infantry provided further evidence. He claimed she had been serving with a lover. However, he said that they were in different companies. Yet she saw him on a daily basis while managing to remain concealed from him in the regiment. The details that Jones shared in his memoirs do not exactly match the accounts of O’Meara, Cabrick and Bloomfield. The trio indicated that soldiers in the 90th Illinois, including Quinn’s husband, were aware of her presence. Plus, if Jerry Kane was indeed her spouse, that denotes that the couple served in the same company. Service records indicate that Kane served in Company G, which is also the company included in military documents regarding Elizabeth Quinn. Did Jones, who wrote his memoirs decades after the war, incorrectly recall the details of the account about the two serving in different companies?6 Perhaps the pair served in different companies in the 67th Illinois Infantry, a unit they were in prior to enlisting in the 90th Illinois. As a matter of fact, evidence supports this scenario. Lieutenant John Murphy of Company I of the 67th Illinois, Kane’s company, went on to recruit soldiers for Company G of the 90th Illinois. If Quinn had been serving in Company I when she was discovered, Murphy surely would have recognized her when she joined his company of the Irish Legion and would have rejected her. Or, after possibly leaving the 90th Illinois prior to Vicksburg, did Quinn find another lover, this time in the 97th Indiana? Other sources support the Indiana connection. Newspaper articles appearing in 1909 mentioned her serving in the 15th Indiana Infantry as B. F. Miller. However, this soldier’s service records indicate that he was discharged because of a hernia and was, therefore, undoubtedly a man. So newspaper reporters had the wrong soldier and probably the wrong regiment. Yet this association with an Indiana unit regarding Elizabeth Quinn is interesting. Furthermore, a record in the National Archives mentions an affidavit submitted in 1912 by Private Harrison Naylor of the 1st Ohio Cavalry relative to the identity of “Frank Miller,” Company G, 15th Indiana and to her admission to a Nashville hospital.7 Company G was indeed

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the company in which Quinn served but with the 90th Illinois. So was Naylor’s affidavit referring to the Irish Legion and just confused Illinois with Indiana? Or did he have the correct state but wrong regiment? It is interesting that there are wartime and post-war reports that contain a Hoosier connection even if the unit was not the 15th. On the other hand, documentation contradicts Bloomfield’s account of her serving with the 97th Indiana and suggests that she may have remained with the Irish Legion. Wartime newspaper articles record her wounding and capture while serving with the 90th Illinois. Furthermore, prisoner of war and hospital records in the National Archives document her unit as the 90th Illinois Infantry. And in a post-war account, Private Nat Mullin of the 10th Illinois Infantry mentioned he was held as a prisoner of war in Atlanta along with Quinn, whom he claimed was a member of the 90th Illinois.8 Did Quinn remain with the Irish Legion throughout her term of service? Were the accounts concerning the Indiana connection false? Or did she serve in both? If she did serve with the 97th Indiana, she would have been with them briefly, only a couple of months. On the other hand, she was with the 90th Illinois for approximately a year, during which time officers were aware of her presence. Is this why Major Flynn of the 90th Illinois composed a report regarding Quinn instead of Colonel Robert Francis Catterson, who commanded the 97th Indiana? Did Elizabeth’s more lengthy term of service with the 90th Illinois overshadow her shorter stint with the Hoosiers? Perhaps Quinn always saw herself as a member of the Irish Legion even after she was forcibly removed from their ranks and was never connected with her new unit through her short time with them. Plus, her husband was still with the 90th. Therefore, when military officials asked to which unit she belonged, she may have indicated she was a member of the 90th Illinois even though she was not at that time. These are conundrums and questions that remain unanswered. Though at least one wartime newspaper reported that Elizabeth Quinn was present at the siege and capture of Vicksburg, it is difficult to confirm because of the discrepancies involved.9 If she was with the 90th Illinois, she was undoubtedly at Vicksburg. However, if events transpired according to Bloomfield, there is some question as to where exactly Father Kelly sent her while deep in enemy territory and whether she joined the 97th Indiana in time to participate in the siege.

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As May faded into June, soldiers on both sides fell into a monotonous routine of digging and reinforcing earthworks, sniping at each other, and finding activities to pass the time, all the while swatting aside Mississippi mosquitoes in the stifling summer heat. For shelter, Mary Smith and her fellow comrades in the 24th Iowa built structures that one soldier compared to the cattle sheds back home where the sides were open for air circulation. At night, the Hawkeyes settled into beds made of cane. During the day, the Temperance Regiment continued to attend sermons in camp. On June 4, Governor Samuel J. Kirkwood visited and spoke to the unit. More importantly to the soldiers, he also brought much-needed supplies donated by citizens. In addition to foodstuffs generously provided by Iowans, Mary and her fellow Hawkeyes supplemented their rations with tidbits purchased from sutlers. One soldier of the 24th wrote home on June 28, 1863, about getting fresh beef, summer squash, boiled corn, mustard greens, and peppers. The 50 cent butter on his squash reminded him of times when it was one fifth that price. If they could afford it, Mary and her compatriots were also paying 20 to 25 cents per pound for dried apples, 25 cents per pound for dried peaches, and 50 cents for cheese. These items were considerably more than the unnamed woman in Cockrell’s Missouri Brigade and her fellow besieged Confederates, now commanded by “General Starvation,” could acquire. While the Federals complained of inflated prices of such luxuries as butter, fruit, and cheese, their Missouri counterparts for the most part subsisted off handfuls of peas, rice, four ounces of flour, and bacon. When that ran out, mule meat had to suffice.10 The woman soldier and her comrades in Cockrell’s brigade were mostly held in reserve and ordered to the positions that benefited the most from their services. Once they were able to stop in a location for a period of time, the female fighter and her Missouri compatriots dug holes, which they covered with a blanket or cane in order to shield themselves from the brutal Mississippi summer sun. When they were called upon to fortify a position, Cockrell’s brigade found themselves in close quarters with the enemy at the Third Louisiana Redan, which was built to help guard the Jackson Road entrance to Vicksburg. Also known as Fort Hill, the Federals had detonated a mine under it on June 25, 1863, creating a crater twelve feet deep and forty feet wide. The Confederates repaired the parapet and moved the line back. While in their works, the unnamed woman and her

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comrades dodged projectiles hurled by the Federals that consisted of dirt clods hardened by the sun and hand grenades, which were about the size of a goose egg and filled with small bullets. According to one Missourian, they did little damage because they never exploded before hitting the ground. He then explained how his comrades responded, “In return, our regiment . . . threw shells, varying six to ninety pounds, into his works, many of which did great execution.”11 Meanwhile, the Federals prepared to explode another mine under the redan. The woman soldier and her compatriots in Cockrell’s brigade could distinctly hear the digging as their foes worked nearly beneath them. The Yankees detonated it on July 1. One Missourian recalled, “The earth trembled as beneath the giant tread of Titans hurling their huge missiles against the arc of heaven. Immense columns of earth and shattered fragments ascended into the air, and darkened the heavens.” One of those blown skyward was Brigadier General Francis Cockrell who ended up falling a distance down the hill. Miraculously, he escaped serious harm, as did the woman soldier in his brigade. Picking themselves up from the ground, they and their comrades gazed upon a frightful sight. Medical personnel scurried about carrying wounded men with charred, swollen hands and faces to the hospital. Dead men were strewn about. Those among the living were hastily digging in search of comrades buried beneath the debris while under heavy fire.12 Amidst the chaos, the Missouri woman and her compatriots expected a charge from their enemies. But none was forthcoming. Yet the incessant shelling continued. As June turned into July 1863, Pemberton began to fully realize the perilous situation he faced in trying to continue defending the city. While the Yankees crept closer, he considered one last charge to break out of the besieged city. However, the state of the soldiers, severely weakened after enduring a siege lasting over a month, led him to believe such a feat would be futile. Surrender was the only option for the Confederate commander to save the lives of his soldiers. On July 4, 1863, the defenders of Vicksburg stacked arms. The siege was over. The Confederates had braved the horrid conditions inside the city for forty-seven days. The suffering that the Southerners endured proved to be too much to bear for one Missourian of Cockrell’s brigade. He took his own life by virtue of a laudanum overdose just prior to the surrender. For those who departed the besieged city, their escape provided them immeasurable

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Allatoona Pass, the site of a vicious battle fought in October 1864, in which multiple Confederate women became casualties, at least one of whom was killed. Photograph by George Barnard, National Archives at College Park, 165-SC-29.

relief to be leaving their miserable existence behind. “Never has an army been more grateful than ours upon leaving Vicksburg,” Missouri Corporal Ephraim M. Anderson of the 2nd Regiment stated. “It was like a prisoner who had been unshackled in his cell and turned loose to breathe again the pure air . . . the garrison . . . almost rejoicing in the sense of freedom.”13 Ironically, the Confederates exchanged a figurative prison for a literal one as they now fell into the hands of the enemy. One Southerner who departed Vicksburg as a captive that hot Mississippi day was an alleged woman soldier named Ellen Levasay of the 3rd Missouri Infantry. However, research reveals that this individual has been a victim of misidentification. Historians simply assumed that the soldier was a woman based solely on the feminine connotation of the name. However, researchers failed to notice in the service records that Ellen Levasay was one of many misspellings for Elin Lievsay, who was a man. After the war, his marriage and subsequent fathering of children removed any doubts as to the correct sex of the aforementioned soldier. Furthermore, Elin’s descendants verify that their grandfather was in fact a man.14 Along with Lievsay, the unnamed woman with Cockrell’s brigade became prisoners of war when the besieged city fell. The defenders of

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Vicksburg signed a parole notice that they would not take up arms against the United States until they were exchanged. Two months later, the Missourians received word that the exchange was complete and that they were transferred to Major General Samuel French’s division.15 After engaging in light skirmishing with Sherman at Meridian in February 1864, the brigade went east to serve in the Atlanta Campaign. Following the fall of the important rail and commercial center in September, Hood turned his attention to Tennessee, and he set into motion plans to retake Nashville, which initially called for the Confederates to make attempts to dislodge the Federals protecting the Western and Atlantic Railroad and Sherman’s supply lines. During the ensuing Battle of Allatoona Pass on October 5, 1864, Cockrell’s brigade was engaged in some of the heaviest fighting of the campaign that saw vicious hand-to-hand combat at Rowett’s Redoubt, around the base of which blood began to soak into the ground, forming a river. The Missouri woman soldier, her aforementioned female counterpart in the 29th North Carolina, and their male comrades faced challenging circumstances from the start. Just to reach the fort, the women and their compatriots had to navigate a demanding obstacle course. A Missouri countryman observed, “The country . . . was rough and broken, covered with a growth chiefly of stunted timber, interspersed with pine, which grew large and towering. Within three hundred yards of the works the trees had been felled but not cleared up, and a very brushy and tangled space was left for some distance near the intrenchments.” Captain Joseph Boyce of the Missouri Brigade added, “Our first trouble was in scrambling through and over the abatis, which was, I think, thickly laced with telegraph wire, where we lost many men.” Yet the female fighters and their fellow Confederates continued forward. And now, in addition to having to contend with the terrain, the Missouri and North Carolina women soldiers along with their compatriots faced deadly artillery. From the redoubt, Union soldier Lieutenant Harvey M. Trimble of the 93rd Illinois Infantry bore witness to the scene. “Solid shot and shells, grape and canister from double shotted cannon, and a hail storm of bullets were rapidly and accurately poured into the ranks of the Confederates . . . Notwithstanding their fearful losses at every step, they still advanced, faster and faster, until their whole force, west of the railroad cut, burst into an impetuous charge. The spectacle was sublime.”16

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The struggle with the hilly and wooded terrain paled in comparison to the horrific and mortal fight at the walls of the redoubt. Captain Boyce of the Missouri Brigade noted, “As our boys swarmed over the parapet, the bayonet was freely used by both sides, officers firing their pistols, and men throwing sticks and stones.” Another one of the Missouri woman’s comrades added, “Here sabers clashed, bayonets crossed, and clubs and rocks hurled back and forth in the desperate struggle.” An additional soldier from Cockrell’s Missouri Brigade declared, “That was the only bayonet fight we were in during the war—God grant that we may never witness another scene like that.” On the Federal side, an Illinois soldier with the 93rd regiment saw a captain swinging an empty ammunition box to and fro as if swatting at bees.17 Although initially successful, the Missourians were unable to take the Star Fort to which the Federals fled after being overrun at Rowett’s Redoubt with heavy losses. The brutal, close-quartered fray at the redoubt had lasted a mere twenty minutes. But for many, it would be the last twenty minutes of their young lives as the savagery claimed them. One Iowa veteran recalled, “There was the only place in four years’ service . . . where I saw the blood run along the ground. In the road at the redoubt, the dust was several inches deep, and along in that dust, a rivulet of purple ran for six or eight rods, and one hundred and sixteen soldiers of the blue and gray lay dead in one heap on less than an eighth of an acre of ground.” As a testament to the savage desperation that men—and women—displayed in trying to kill each other at Allatoona, it is significant to note that a portion of a single Federal brigade, that of Brigadier General John M. Corse, expended all but approximately 250 of 165,000 rounds for the two-and-a-half hour battle.18 Upon the cessation of hostilities, Lieutenant William Ludlow, a Federal engineer, surveyed the carnage. As he stood gazing upon the broken landscape, a surgeon joined him and invited him to accompany him to the hospital. During their walk, the doctor revealed to the lieutenant that one of his patients was a woman and challenged him to identify her. Upon their arrival, the two walked slowly among the beds of suffering soldiers, Ludlow carefully studying the face of each one. Yet he was unable to determine which one was the female fighter. After making a return pass, the surgeon revealed which wounded Confederate soldier was the woman by stopping at her bed. She was tanned and freckled, her face dirty, and

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she was propped up on an elbow. Her grimy hands held a corn-cob pipe. “How do you feel?” asked the surgeon. “Pretty well, but my leg hurts like the devil,” came the reply. This wound led to her capture and discovery upon treatment. While in the hospital the female fighter informed the surgeon that all of her relatives in the Missouri Brigade with whom she fought had been killed earlier in the war. Her ultimate fate, like her identity, is unknown.19 This woman may have lost more than her secret by virtue of this wound. Newspapers reported that surgeons discovered a girl with the Missouri Brigade after amputating her leg. However, Ludlow himself never mentioned that the Missouri woman he saw was missing a leg. Neither did Private Henry R. Pippitt of the 104th Ohio Infantry who also saw her in the hospital. Rather, he observed that she was wounded in the “fleshy part of the leg.” Yet another soldier who reported seeing this wounded Missouri woman in the hospital the same day as Pippitt was Private Wendell D. Wiltsie of the 23rd Michigan Infantry. He noted that she was wounded in the thigh.20 All of these soldiers mentioned a wounded leg but not a missing leg. Surgeons may have taken the limb after their visit and the newspapers incorrectly reported that the amputation is what led to her discovery when her secret would have been revealed beforehand during her initial examination and treatment. Or the newspapers reported the wrong information, and there was no amputation at all. Another possibility was that there was more than one wounded woman soldier with Cockrell’s Missouri Brigade, a theory supported by several soldiers. In a diary entry on October 7, 1864, Corporal Sam Morse of the 4th Minnesota Infantry recorded that he went to the hospital to get a look at the Rebel wounded. There, he “Saw a partition up and got told two women behind it.” He did not say to which regiment they belonged but did note that that there were “a lot of Missouri men there.” These men were with Cockrell since the only Missourians at the Battle of Allatoona were with his command. With so many wounded at the hospital hailing from Missouri, the two women Morse saw may very well have been with Cockrell, also. The Minnesota corporal further recorded the condition of the women in his journal, “One wounded worse than the other. Asked for tobacco and gave them some. Looked pretty tough, didn’t look like women to me. Didn’t sound like women and sure didn’t smell like a woman should.” Two days later, Private John Ashton of the 118th

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Ohio Infantry recorded in his diary that he went to the hospital to visit the Confederate wounded and was told there were two women among them. He did not say whether he actually saw them. The soldier of the 93rd Illinois Infantry who wrote about the dead woman of the 29th North Carolina Infantry also mentioned a rumor concerning two Confederate women. He asked in his letter to his friend who was recovering in the hospital if he had seen them.21 Discrepancies exist regarding the accounts of these women, particularly how many there were. Out of the aforementioned soldiers who wrote about wounded female fighters in the hospital after the Battle of Allatoona, some mentioned only one while others claimed there were two. Out of the soldiers who documented multiple wounded women, only Morse said that he actually saw them and that there was a partition up shielding them from gawkers. His encounter occurred two days before Pippitt’s and Wiltsie’s. Ludlow did not say exactly when he went to the hospital. Perhaps the more seriously wounded woman Morse referred to had died before the other three visited the hospital, and the partition was removed from around the remaining woman. Or perhaps there were three different women in two hospitals. Regardless, word began to spread, and Morse noted on October 8 that the “Surgeon chased away men who just wanted to see the women.” This is probably why Ashton never saw them himself. A few days later, Corporal Morse returned to his diary to record another incident involving a female soldier at Allatoona. On October 12, he wrote that he “Heard tell one of the burial details found a dead woman in a reb jacket and buried her with the rest.” He was likely referring to the aforementioned mangled woman of the 29th North Carolina Infantry, whose face had been smashed beyond recognition. Her secret was discovered by a member of a burial detail. The exact number of women soldiers who became casualties at the Battle of Allatoona is unknown. Nor can researchers pinpoint how many specifically were with Cockrell’s Missouri Brigade, a brigade that earned elite status and praise from commanders of other units. For instance, Lieutenant Colonel Walter Roher of the 20th Mississippi Infantry commented on Cockrell’s troops as they passed in review at Demopolis, Alabama, in 1864, “The far-famed Missouri Brigade, they are the brag men of this or any other army, they fight better, drill better and look better than any other men in the army, clean clothes, clean faces and all in uniform and every

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man in the step.” Modern scholars tend to agree with Roher’s assessment. Noted Civil War historian Ed Bearss called Cockrell’s Missouri Brigade “the best on either side, including the Stonewall Brigade and the Iron Brigade of the North.”22 And it is interesting that this vaunted Missouri unit contained perhaps three women soldiers in its ranks. There was one at least, the woman Ludlow, Pippitt, and Wiltsie saw, and she participated in several hard-fought battles with the Missouri Brigade in Mississippi, culminating with the siege of Vicksburg. On the Federal side, women soldiers celebrated the fall of the river citadel in Mississippi alongside their male comrades. Lieutenant Henry A. Kircher of the 12th Missouri, which was brigaded with Charles Junghaus’s 3rd Missouri, wrote home that “all in all, it is a joy and a double celebration, Vicksburg and the Fourth of July.” Apparently, the glorious Yankee victory had soothed some of the bitterness Kircher and his German comrades, Junghaus undoubtedly included, harbored from previous defeats in Mississippi. Michiganders joined the Missourians in expressing their elation. Private Perry Mayo of the 2nd Michigan Infantry wrote to his parents, “The joy of the men knew no bounds. . . . Such a Fourth of July as that only comes once in a lifetime.”23 And Jenny Lockwood was there among the Wolverines to experience it. One female soldier who was unable to celebrate the Federal victory with her unit was Jennie Hodgers. While the 95th Illinois marched triumphantly into Vicksburg, she languished in camp with chronic diarrhea, a condition which struck her around the middle of June and one from which she suffered for the rest of her life. The ailment was so severe at one point that, on April 28, 1864, Private Cashier was admitted to her regimental hospital for it. She was discharged the following day with her secret still intact. The malady would not abate, and Hodgers continued to seek relief from the regimental surgeon for the remainder of the war. Yet, none of the medical personnel who cared for her throughout her bouts with the illness ever discovered her true identity because the treatment did not require a doctor to examine intimate places of her body.24 Jennie Hodgers’s ruse continues to deceive to this day as many visitors to the Vicksburg National Military Park gaze upon the name of Albert D. J. Cashier etched upon the tablet for Company G, 95th Illinois Infantry, inside the Illinois monument without realizing that behind it lies the hidden identity of a woman.

Chapter 11 NATCHEZ AND THE SIEGE OF JACKSON

“Chimneyville”

After the fall of Vicksburg, the 95th Illinois Infantry was ordered down the Mississippi River to Natchez. One of the soldiers who disembarked from the steamer on July 13, 1863, was Jennie Hodgers, who marched with her male comrades from the dock up to the Bluff City. Another Illinois soldier, Private Lucius W. Barber of the 15th regiment, noted that the area at the foot of the bluff, referred to as Natchez Under-the-Hill, was a “perfect cess-pool of vice” and that “it has always been the resort of the worst characters and was noted for the amount of crime which had been perpetrated in its midst.”1 The conditions improved as Private Cashier and her comrades in the 95th Illinois reached the upper town and marched through streets that were neatly laid out, wide, and well shaded, which proved to be a relief on that hot summer day. As they filed along, the Illinois troops marveled at their surroundings in Natchez, which Private Barber called “one of the most beautiful cities of the South.” Thus began a three-month occupation of the city by Hodgers and the 95th Illinois. Infantry soldiers soon transformed into wranglers, as one of their first tasks involved capturing five thousand head of cattle that the Confederates were driving from Texas to Johnston’s army, and then herding them to Vicksburg. As the summer wore on, Hodgers and her comrades continued to deal with Rebel bands that lurked in the area. When not chasing Confederate cavalry, they drilled and provided food and protection for ex-slaves that flocked to the Federal camp in Natchez. And they also confiscated cotton. 142

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Natchez Under-the-Hill, ca. 1880. Known as a rough part of the city, this is where Jennie Hodgers and the 95th Illinois Infantry disembarked to begin their occupation of Natchez. Thomas H. and Joan W. Gandy Photograph Collection, Mss. 3778, Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections, LSU Libraries, Baton Rouge, LA.

While garrisoning the Bluff City, Private Cashier and the 95th Illinois received a visit from their division commander, General John McArthur, who attended their dress parade. Impressed, the general conveyed his satisfaction with the unit’s appearance. The day-to-day drudgery of a soldier’s life continued in Natchez until the middle of October 1863, when the regiment was ordered back to Vicksburg and thence to Louisiana in order to participate in Nathaniel Banks’s ill-fated Red River Campaign. Back in Mississippi, the Federals continued to operate. With the key now in President Lincoln’s pocket, the South had been cut in two. But in order to solidify the victory, Grant sent Sherman east to Jackson in order to deal with Johnston and his formidable and well-entrenched Army of Relief, which the Confederates assembled to provide assistance to the inhabitants of Vicksburg, but never used. The same day they witnessed the fall of their city, inhabitants of Vicksburg watched as Yankee soldiers, supply wagons, and artillery pieces clogged the dusty Mississippi roads heading east. The blue-clad soldiers

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Jackson felt the wrath of the Federals multiple times. This drawing from Harper’s Weekly, June 20, 1863, edition, p. 393, depicts the initial destruction of the city in May 1863. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015022644960;view= 1up;seq=367;size=125.

found the journey challenging as they had to contend with a hot, summer sun in addition to a lack of adequate food and potable water. Overcoming these trials, Sherman’s troops arrived at Jackson several days later and engaged the Confederates on July 9–16 with elements of three corps, all containing women soldiers within the ranks. In Parke’s IX Corps was Jenny Lockwood with the 2nd Michigan Infantry. Part of Colonel Daniel Leasure’s brigade of Brigadier General Thomas Welsh’s division, this regiment was positioned on the northern edge of Jackson and on the morning of July 11, marched south to engage the Confederates. Acting as skirmishers ahead of their brigade, Lockwood and her comrades mistakenly believed that officers had ordered them to advance on the eastern side of Canton Road, and they dashed unsupported towards the enemy’s defenses. Captain Charles Haydon stated that the Wolverines “crossed the open at a run & without much loss, the men full of fire, yelling like devils.” Jenny and the rest of the 2nd Michigan managed to reach within a few feet of the Confederate works before the charge fell apart without support.2 After completing their work at Vicksburg and Jackson, the 2nd Michigan was ordered to Kentucky. Lockwood went with them, served throughout the remainder of the war, and mustered out with the unit in Washington, DC, where she discreetly shed her male disguise. Jenny remained in the city, where, a year later, she appeared sick and homeless at a police station. With nowhere to go and no hope of obtaining a pension because of the near impossibility of proving her service in male disguise, the veteran sought assistance from city officials, who took her to Providence Hospital. History does not record the male alias under which she served, or her ultimate fate.3

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Also with Parke was Elizabeth Quinn in Sooy Smith’s division. In his newspaper account about her, Captain Bloomfield of the 26th Illinois confirmed her participation in Sherman’s expedition to Jackson. But the question remains whether she was with the 90th Illinois Infantry or the 97th Indiana Infantry. Quinn would have experienced pure terror regardless of her unit. The 90th Illinois, positioned in front of their own cannons and caught under a crossfire, had a ring-side seat at a tremendous artillery duel described as “the most terrific and grand sights in modern warfare.” The 97th Indiana also had to deal with raking artillery fire as they advanced to within two hundred yards of the main Confederate line on July 16. The unit found itself unsupported as it endured “a perfect storm of grape and canister, solid shot, and shell” until ordered to halt in a ravine, where it lay for four hours until Colonel Robert Francis Catterson ordered the Hoosiers to rise and retreat.4 Major General Edward O. C. Ord’s XIII Corps held the southern flank of the Federal line. One of the regiments in this corps, which was formerly commanded by McClernand, was the 24th Iowa Infantry with which Mary Smith served. Part of Slack’s brigade, Hovey’s division, Mary and her male compatriots engaged in skirmishing and destroyed railroad track and cars. With the 3rd Missouri Infantry of Woods’s brigade, Steele’s division was the German woman known as Charles Junghaus. Her unit was held in reserve during most of the siege but had to endure constant shelling. To protect themselves, she and her comrades constructed earthworks, which, as Corporal Buegel noted, were not always effective as evidenced by the death of two brothers in Company F. Called “Zänkers” (quarrelers) by their companions for their incessant arguing, the siblings were torn to pieces by a single shell, their blood mingling together as it splattered. “This quarreling had now finished,” stated a grim Buegel.5 Once Jackson fell into Union hands, the Yankees again looted, ravaged, and burned what was left of it from their May 1863 spree. One Pennsylvania soldier recalled that “private dwellings [were] entered and plundered of money, jewelry, and all else of any value was carried off; crockery, chinaware, pianos, furniture, &c., were smashed to atoms; hogsheads of sugar rolled into the street and the heads knocked in and contents spilled.” What the Federals did not carry away, they torched. The capital city, observed Sherman, was “one mass of charred ruins.” Chimneys, oftentimes the

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lone structures remaining from the ruin, haunted the desolate, scorched landscape of Jackson, giving rise to the city’s moniker, “Chimneyville.”6 In Jackson, cross-dressing was not restricted to women disguised as men in the ranks. Some male soldiers decided to fool about by entering the city while outfitted in feminine garb. According to Colonel William J. Bolton of the 51st Pennsylvania Infantry, “[The regiment] made a grotesque appearance clad in feminine attire, sun-bonnets, frocks, skirts, shawls, band-boxes, and brooms in their hands. It was indeed ludicrous. Sherman in passing the regiment could not help but smile.” Brigadier General Edward Ferrero, however, was far from entertained and was poised to reprimand the men until a soldier wearing an old-fashioned, high-crowned Dunstable bonnet saluted him, which resulted in the general bursting out in uncontrolled laughter.7 The Confederates were not amused. Johnston had abandoned Jackson during the night of July 16 and moved his force across the Pearl River. Meanwhile, Charles Junghaus of the 3rd Missouri and Soldier Tom of Thielemann’s Illinois Cavalry Battalion, both of Steele’s corps, were sent north of the city to Canton in order to destroy rails and supply stations. As Woods’s infantry brigade reached Bear Creek on the outskirts of the town on July 17, they encountered heavy Confederate artillery and rifle fire. As a result, Junghaus and her comrades in the 3rd were sent across the creek on a flanking maneuver. They then advanced through a cornfield to the road occupied by the enemy who ultimately withdrew back to Canton. Upon entering the town, the brigade commenced to destroying it. Soldiers burned and bent two miles of rails, in addition to wrecking locomotives, cars, engine houses, repair and machine shops, offices, and depots. One of which the Germans in Woods’s brigade burned was Calhoun Station. Ironically, the area would be rebuilt and settled by German immigrants around the turn of the century.8 When the Federals returned to Vicksburg, Elizabeth Quinn and her unit camped at the Big Black River. From there, she headed to Memphis. Her story from this point varies depending on her regiment. The 90th Illinois was ordered to Collierville, Tennessee, where the Irish Legion helped save Sherman from capture, and thence to Florence, Alabama. However, Captain Bloomfield claimed she joined the Pioneer Corps at Memphis. And it was with the pioneers that she arrived at Florence, Alabama, in December 1863. Reports also vary as to what exactly happened to “Frank

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The Planters Hotel in Nashville served as a hospital for officers during the war. Known as Hospital No. 17, it was one of three hospitals where Frances Quinn convalesced after suffering a severe leg wound. The location of the hospital is now a surface parking lot at the intersection of Deadrick Street and 5th Avenue. Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-33754.

Miller.” Some accounts claim she was wounded in the Battle of Chickamauga. Others say she was captured during a battle “near Chattanooga” and was shot trying to escape. However, records in the National Archives document that General Phillip Dale Roddey’s Alabama cavalry captured her in December 1863, while she was out on a foraging expedition with a small party in Florence, Alabama.9 The New York Times of April 21, 1864, stated that a few days after she was taken, the Confederates shot her in the leg while attempting to flee, a fateful decision undoubtedly driven by the possible horrors she believed she would face should her captors

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discover her true gender. A Confederate surgeon did learn her secret while treating her wound, but fortunately, her fears ultimately proved fruitless. Of course, Quinn had no way of knowing that her captors were not going to harm her during her incarceration, and the teenager was undoubtedly terrified as she hobbled on crutches along with her fellow prisoners to board the cars bound for Dalton and thence to a prison in Atlanta, where she remained until General George H. Thomas authorized Colonel Joseph W. Burke of the 10th Ohio Infantry to exchange her and twenty-six of her male comrades at Graysville, Georgia, on February 17, 1864.10 The following day, Quinn was taken to General Hospital No. 2 in Chattanooga. Her wound had become gangrenous and life threatening at this point, which resulted in lengthy hospital stays. She remained in Chattanooga until March 1 when she was transferred to General Hospital No. 17 in Nashville. She was moved once more on May 5 when she was taken to General Hospital No. 1, also in Nashville.11 While there, nurses helped raise funds for her by having two images taken of her, one of her in uniform and another of her in a dress and posed so that her wedding ring was quite visible. She sold the pictures to soldiers and visitors for 25 cents each, making “considerable money” in the process. Sergeant Jeremiah F. Riordan of Company K of the 90th Illinois was one of those who purchased a photograph, which he sent home to his mother explaining that the image was of the “heroine of the Irish Legion.”12 On June 10, 1864, medical personnel deemed Elizabeth Quinn healthy enough to leave the hospital. Where she went immediately thereafter is unknown. She indicated to Wittenmyer that she wanted to remain in Nashville and even reenlist in another unit. The nurse, however, disagreed and informed her that recruiting officers had been warned about her and would be on the lookout. Wittenmyer stated that Quinn ultimately acquiesced and two days after their conversation, she was on her way. One source claims Elizabeth, who kept her feminine alias of Frances after the war, ultimately traveled to Harmar, Ohio, where she met a fellow soldier, Matthew Angel, who had served in the 2nd Ohio Heavy Artillery.13 If she somehow managed to stay in Nashville, she likely met Angel there since he was discharged in the city in 1865. She could have then traveled with him back to Gallia County, Ohio, where they married on August 20, 1866. The couple had two daughters, Mary Laura, who was born in 1868, and Maggie, born in 1872. On June 8, just two weeks after the birth

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Frances Elizabeth (Quinn) Angel just prior to her death. Printed in the Cincinnati Enquirer, May 23, 1909.

of Maggie, Frances died of dropsy, or edema, at the age of twenty-eight.14 She is buried in an unknown location in Ohio. Like Quinn, Soldier Tom of Thielemann’s Illinois Cavalry Battalion along with Charles Junghaus of the 3rd Missouri also went into camp along the Big Black River following the siege of Jackson. That fall, they moved to Memphis. And then when Soldier Tom and Thielemann’s cavalry were en route to Iuka, they were attacked at Collierville by feared cavalry leader Nathan Bedford Forrest. The woman was fortunate to have escaped. Both she and Junghaus then headed out east with their respective units and participated in the battles for Chattanooga, where Soldier Tom served as an attaché for General Frank Blair’s XVII Corps and a scout for Brigadier General Jefferson C. Davis’s XIV Corps during the Atlanta Campaign. It is unknown whether her service continued beyond this point, but she did survive the war.15 That was not to be Charles Junghaus’s destiny, however. During the evening of the first day’s fighting at Resaca on May 14, 1864, she and her

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Part of the Resaca battlefield, taken by George Barnard, 1866. The woman known as “Charles Junghaus” was shot in the head off to the right of this picture. National Archives at College Park, RG 165, 165-SC-22.

comrades of the 3rd Missouri Infantry charged across an open field at the double quick and waded a slough under heavy fire in order to take a series of hills overlooking the Confederate works. “We preferred to die or conquer on the hill,” a defiant Corporal Buegel stated.16 The former proved to be Junghaus’s fate as she was shot in the head during this action. Her comrades carried her to the divisional hospital, where she lingered for three days before passing away. Because her wound was to the head, surgeons found no need to examine the rest of her body; therefore, they had not detected her gender when they instructed orderlies to bury her. The red Georgia dirt covered not only her corpse but also her secret for another two years until gravediggers tasked with exhuming the bodies at Resaca for reburial in Chattanooga National Cemetery became suspicious of her small feet. Further examination exposed the truth.17 Despite the revelation that Charles Junghaus was a woman, she was reburied with her male comrades. Her final resting place is Chattanooga National Cemetery, section K, grave 9798.18 The name on her stone, however, is misspelled as Jungham. This error can be attributed to the fact that the government contracted local citizens to reinter the Civil War dead and

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that “the records and grave-marks were the work of illiterate or careless employees. Frequently . . . the lists have been rendered of comparatively little value from barbarous spelling and bad or careless penmanship.” As Junghaus’s corps commander William T. Sherman said, “Military fame is . . . to be killed on the battlefield and have your name spelled wrong.”19 If that were the case, the woman known as Charles Junghaus would have been wrapped in glory. While Soldier Tom and Charles Junghaus went out east with their respective units, Jennie Hodgers of the 95th Illinois and Mary Smith of the 24th Iowa were sent west to assist Major General Nathaniel Banks in his Red River Campaign. Both women survived the ill-fated expedition; although, Smith was slightly wounded in the hand at Sabine Crossroads. She recovered, marched with her unit out east, and mustered out at the close of the war with her true identity intact. Smith then resumed her feminine lifestyle and procured work at Rock Island, Illinois, where she remained for six months before finally joining her family in northern Iowa. Her response to the ensuing barrage of questions as to her whereabouts over the last several years was that she had been “honestly employed, and had never forsaken the right way.” While a soldier, she invested in land in northern Iowa, which appreciated in value, and then saved the rest of her pay for school tuition, two endeavors she likely would have never been able to accomplish as a Victorian woman. Eventually, Mary met a fellow soldier from her regiment who proposed marriage. Unable to accept in good conscience knowing she harbored a secret past, she informed him of all of her adventures with the 24th Iowa. Because he shared the same wartime experiences, albeit with a different company, the gentleman, whose identity was not revealed by the reporter, was able to corroborate her story. His love for his fiancée remained steadfast despite the revelation of her unconventional past, and the couple married in February 1871.20

Chapter 12 BRICE’S CROSSROADS AND TUPELO

“Victory never more glorious, disaster never more crushing.” Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest

Mary Smith’s fellow female veteran of the Red River Campaign, Jennie Hodgers, also survived the ill-fated expedition only to find herself involved in another one, this time in Mississippi. After departing central Louisiana, the 95th Illinois Infantry was ordered back to Vicksburg and thence to Memphis, where it arrived in the latter part of May 1864. On June 1, the woman known as Albert Cashier boarded the train with her unit, destined for northern Mississippi, where Confederate cavalry leader Nathan Bedford Forrest was terrorizing Federal forces. Fearing that the “Wizard of the Saddle” would threaten his supply lines and disrupt communications during his march to the sea, Sherman ordered Brigadier General Samuel Sturgis to detain him. The two forces clashed on June 10, 1864, at Brice’s Crossroads, also referred to as the Battle of Guntown or Tishomingo Creek. Hastening to join the battle already in progress, many of Hodgers’s male comrades ultimately fell by the roadside from fatigue. The seven-mile forced march was challenging for soldiers wearing dark blue wool uniforms in the sweltering Mississippi heat. Floundering in the mud resulting from several days of heavy rain only compounded the physical demands. And the trials continued for Private Cashier and her comrades at Brice’s Crossroads. Upon arrival, the remainder of the 95th, which was deployed in the center of the Federal line located on rolling hills and surrounded by woods, lost three successive commanders early on: Colonel Thomas W. Humphrey, Captain William H. Stewart, and Captain Elliot 152

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N. Bush who had been Jennie Hodgers’s company commander. Leadership finally fell to Captain Almon Schellenger who had the difficult task of checking the Confederate assault. Hodgers and her comrades held their own. But then Confederate artillery commanded by Captain John W. Morton galloped onto the field within two hundred yards of the Federal line, unlimbered his guns, and proceeded to rake the bluecoats with double-shotted canister. Within a short time, the Confederates enveloped both flanks of the Federals. The Yankee infantrymen, suffering from the Mississippi summer heat and the onslaught of a vicious foe, took to their heels, followed by Forrest’s artillerymen who were advancing their guns by hand, stopping only to load and fire. Roads soon became clogged with retreating Federals fleeing for their lives. As they rushed past each other, Hodgers and her comrades discarded any equipment that might hinder their flight. Floundering horses compounded the confusion amidst the chaotic scene. Badly routed, Hodgers and her fellow Yankees made their way across Tishomingo Creek and back to Memphis. One Union soldier described the state of his comrades as they filtered into the city, “Nearly all men [are] barefooted and nearly naked and their feet terribly blistered and poisoned. Their condition was truly pitiable.” Indeed, the Federals entered the state in much better shape than when they departed. As the Union forces approached the crossroads prior to the engagement, Major General Cadwallader C. Washburn proclaimed that the boys in blue “lacked nothing to ensure a successful campaign.” An encounter with Forrest changed that. “We have lost almost everything,” a soundly defeated Sturgis stated after the battle.2 Hodgers had survived yet another disastrous campaign for the Union. By the time she mustered out with her regiment at Belvidere, Illinois, on August 17, 1865, she had participated in approximately forty battles and skirmishes during her three-year enlistment and somehow escaped unscathed. However, she suffered from chronic dysentery, the ailment afflicting her not only throughout the war, but for the rest of her days.3 After returning home to Illinois, Hodgers relocated to three different towns before finally settling in Saunemin in 1869. With her secret still intact, she maintained her male disguise and continued to take advantage of opportunities denied to women. She voted in elections when it was still illegal for women to do so and worked at a variety of jobs including farmhand, day laborer, handyman, child sitter, janitor, property caretaker,

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and town lamplighter. The ex-soldier was not only popular among her male comrades with whom she fought, but she was also respected and highly regarded by civilians she encountered during her post-war life. One of the families for whom she worked, the Chesbros, even bought her a house, which still stands today and is open to tourists.4 In 1890, Hodgers applied for and received a pension with the aid of fifteen former employers and acquaintances in the community who sent a statement to the Pension Bureau declaring her need for assistance. Nobody knew that the soldier for whom they helped procure a pension was really a woman. As a matter of fact, it was not until she was involved in an accident in 1911 when her true identity was finally revealed. Hodgers was working in the yard of Illinois state senator, Ira Lish, when he backed over her with his car, breaking her leg just below the hip. During the course of the examination and treatment, the town doctor discovered Albert Cashier’s secret, which was revealed to only a few people initially until the story was leaked to the press in 1913. Once her secret became public, Jennie Hodgers, hounded for more information, began to reveal bits and pieces of her past while maintaining privacy regarding many of the details.5 Following the accident, Hodgers was admitted to the Quincy Veterans’ Home and then committed to the Watertown State Hospital nearly two years later after mental health personnel judged her insane. Hodgers’s symptoms that led to her institutionalization, according to officials who admitted her, included “no memory, noisy at times, poor sleeper, and feeble.” She was seventy years old at that point. Once the newspapers began to spread the story of Albert Cashier, some of her comrades with whom she had served traveled to visit her and supported her when the government tried to take away her pension under the accusations of fraud. Many of them related stories of her hardworking spirit, endurance, and bravery. It did not matter to them that Albert Cashier had been discovered to be a woman. The trials of combat forged a bond among these soldiers that transcended gender. The old soldiers were very protective of her while she was confined in the asylum and were outraged when attendants forced her to wear a dress, despite her protests. She had worn pants her entire life, and some historians believe that an unfamiliarity of moving about in a long dress or skirt caused her to fall and break her hip. The elderly woman never recovered.6

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Jennie Hodgers, alias “Albert Cashier,” on the left as a soldier with the 95th Illinois Infantry and at the Quincy Soldiers’ Home on the right. Courtesy Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM).

On October 10, 1915, Jennie Hodgers, alias Albert Cashier, died of an infection at the Watertown State Hospital in Moline, Illinois, at the age of 71. She was buried in a plot reserved for her by the Chesbro family in Sunnyslope Cemetery located in Saunemin, Illinois. The local GAR post to which Hodgers belonged arranged a funeral for her with full military honors. She was dressed in her uniform and buried in a flag-draped casket.7 Only Hodgers’s male alias appeared on her original headstone. However, a newer marker was erected in 1985 that included both her feminine and masculine names. Current scholars and journalists argue that Hodgers was a transgendered man. However, their claim of Hodgers as transgendered is

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unfounded and based solely on the fact that she lived the vast majority of her life disguised as a man, a trend that was originally facilitated by a family member, either her mother or stepfather, depending on the source. Though she was dressed in boy’s clothing from a young age, Hodgers learned the difference between male and female bodies and that she was the latter, as evidenced by her awareness to remain undetected in Victorian society, especially while in the military. This begs the question, “What is a man?” What traits— and how many— must one exhibit in order to qualify for “manhood”? It seems complex questions such as these have yet to be definitively answered. Of course, biology provides an answer, and, in this case, Hodgers was undeniably a female. What if Hodgers was uncomfortable with individuals referring to her as a man, even after all that time? Yet, she suffered in silence so that she could live her life freely and independently. We just simply do not know. Hodgers herself never commented on whether she identified as a man or not. Actually, the only indication she gave towards her gender identification counters the transgender theory. In her explanation why she chose to wear trousers instead of a dress or skirt, she claimed, “In herding sheep, it was better to have the male attire.” Clothing provided an important defining element to gender during the Victorian era. Therefore, if Hodgers had truly identified as a man from a social standpoint, she would have indicated that she wore trousers because they were the garment worn by her chosen gender. But she did not. Rather, she cited ease of use as the reason for her to don the breeches. Therefore, socially speaking, Hodgers denied using clothing to conform to a masculine identity. Psychologically speaking, there is no definite connection between clothing choice and gender identity anyway. The American Psychological Association defines cross-dressing as “wearing clothing . . . and/or adopting a gender expression not associated with a person’s assigned sex at birth,” and that it is “not always reflective of gender identity or sexual orientation.”8 Just because she chose to disguise herself as a man by wearing male clothing and assuming a male alias does not mean that she believed herself to be a man or that she wanted to be. Certainly, she could have discarded her male name after the war in favor of her feminine one while continuing to wear male clothing, but such a decision would have resulted in unwanted attention and ostracism. To Hodgers, it was just easier and more pragmatic to continue her ruse, especially considering that she was on her own

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after she mustered out of the army. With no more paycheck forthcoming from the government and no family members to offer support, she had to find a way to take care of herself now that she had returned to civilian life. And so she decided to remain Albert Cashier in order to continue taking advantage of all of the opportunities that had opened up to her as a disguised male, such as more abundant, better-paying jobs. She could not do so with a feminine identity and male clothing. Furthermore, crossdressing was still illegal when Jennie came marching home in 1865. So she undoubtedly desired to avoid being arrested for wearing male clothing like other women who ultimately found themselves in court in such states as Louisiana, Wisconsin, and West Virginia.9 As a matter of fact, it was not until the 1920s and 1930s, after Hodgers died, when fashion and social norms began to gravitate towards looser and simpler clothing styles and away from strict Victorian standards. Since that time, judges began throwing out court cases involving cross-dressing. Yet, it took longer for cities to lift their bans for the offense. For example, Chicago did not officially overturn its 1851 ordnance until 1973, coming on the heels of the passage of Title IX the year before, which forbade schools receiving Federal funds from requiring girls to wear dresses or skirts.10 So Jennie Hodgers’s decision to continue her male disguise after the war seems less about gender identity and more based out of a desire to maintain an independent, self-sufficient lifestyle while wearing comfortable, functioning clothing of her choice without getting arrested. If Jennie Hodgers and others were transported to our time where women enjoy freedoms and opportunities they never could in their era, would they still feel the need or desire to disguise themselves as men? We do not know the answer. The only alleged woman soldier who publicly expressed a desire to be a man was Lizzie Compton, aliases “John Gavey” and “John Gilbert.” The newspaper reporter who interviewed her said that “she declares that she may yet be a gentleman, but that she can never be a lady.”11 Period newspaper reporters in addition to contemporary and current authors have heralded Compton’s daring deeds as a woman soldier. According to the narrative, she claimed to have served in upwards of seven different regiments and was wounded multiple times. However, Lieutenant Benjamin F. Travis’s account in a regimental history of the 25th Michigan Infantry raises doubt regarding her assertions. Travis served in the 25th, which was one of Compton’s alleged units, and recounted meeting her

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on a march from Lebanon, Kentucky, to Green River in June 1863. When she wandered up beside him and engaged in conversation, he initially thought she was a “citizen boy” until she admitted to him that she was a girl. She further explained to Travis that she came along with the regiment as a “doctor’s waiter,” though the lieutenant never saw her assist the surgeon. Further question regarding her service stems from the fact that Travis referred to her as a “citizen boy,” which suggests that she was not in uniform and was never an enlisted soldier. The lieutenant then reported her to Colonel Orlando H. Moore, who doubted Travis until he found her and talked to her himself. She told him that her name was Elizabeth, instead of a male alias, and that she was from Tennessee. Despite this revelation, Colonel Moore initially allowed her to remain with the regiment because he was unable to “send her adrift upon his own orders.” All kindness was cast aside, though, when she was caught stealing a pistol which resulted in her banishment from the unit. However, Compton continued to haunt the camp. Then, after the Battle of Green River three days later, she was spotted robbing the dead, and when the regiment moved out, she was found hiding in a teamster’s wagon. After the adjutant learned of this, he immediately found her and threatened to shoot her if she did not leave the unit once and for all. She finally complied. This account completely contradicts the romantic story she told newspaper reporters. Instead of officers running her off for being a nuisance, Lizzie claimed she left the regiment only after a wound she sustained during the Battle of Green River betrayed her secret and led to her dismissal from the service.12 Compton moved on to other units in the area and continued giving the military fits until Brigadier General Edward H. Hobson, commander of the south central Kentucky district, had her committed to the Cincinnati House of Refuge in 1864. However, the board of directors discharged her on May 2 because they felt that “it was not the proper place for one of her age and character.”13 Founded in 1850, the purpose of the House was to provide shelter for juvenile boys under sixteen and girls under fourteen. Compton was sixteen or seventeen at the time and, therefore, too old to qualify. So Lizzie was released back into society and continued to find herself in police court in Louisville. Compton was either a runaway or an orphan, left to care for herself. Assuming a male identity provided her a means to do so. Her declaration

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that she could never be a lady undoubtedly did not imply that she genuinely identified as a man. She admitted to Benjamin Travis that she was a girl and identified herself to Colonel Moore using her feminine name instead of a male alias, which indicates that there was no connection to a male identity. Compton’s aspiration to be a gentleman and not a lady merely appears to be her way of expressing a discontentment with the inequality and oppression women suffered during the Victorian era instead of a sincere desire to become a man. There is simply no conclusive evidence that any of the women soldiers who fought in the Civil War was transgendered. Beyond Lizzie Compton, who was not even a genuine soldier, no female fighter ever publically expressed an aspiration to actually exchange genders. They did, however, indicate a simple longing for social and economic freedom that living as a disguised man afforded them in a strict and oppressive Victorian society. After experiencing the liberation that trousers brought them, both literally and figuratively, it is little wonder that women were reluctant to return to torturous corsets and a restrictive domestic sphere. The same can be said regarding homosexuality and women soldiers. None of them ever expressed an attraction to other women.14 On the contrary, many of them followed a male sweetheart or husband into the ranks or married a man after the war. Regardless, gender identification and sexual orientation should not detract from the military service of genuine women soldiers such as Jennie Hodgers. While much is known about Hodgers’s military service, the same cannot be said of an anonymous woman captured by the 32nd Iowa Infantry near Oxford in August 1864. The Hawkeyes were part of an expedition that could be considered a footnote to the Tupelo Campaign the previous month. Major General A. J. Smith led his XVI Corps to northern Mississippi in pursuit of Forrest, who soon vacated the area in order to initiate a raid on Memphis. In the process of returning to Tennessee to stop the feared Confederate cavalry leader, the 32nd Iowa engaged in skirmishing where they captured a number of prisoners, one of whom turned out to be a woman in male disguise. Colonel John Scott said the action occurred along the Hatchie River. However, he probably meant the Tallahatchie instead given their proximity to Oxford.15 Unfortunately, nothing else is known about this uncommon Confederate soldier.

CONCLUSION

Experiencing Time upon the Stage of History on Their Own Terms The Tupelo Campaign of 1864 and the skirmishing that occurred afterwards concluded major military action in Mississippi. The two main Federal players in the state, Grant and Sherman, had already moved on, Grant to Virginia to take on General Robert E. Lee and Sherman to Georgia and the Carolinas. That fall, at least one of the women soldiers who had fought in Mississippi voted in the election of 1864. Mary Smith cast her lot for Lincoln over fifty years before the 19th Amendment legalized women’s suffrage. Undoubtedly, there were other women soldiers who went to the ballot box for the first and last time as well. For the survivors who made it home, they returned to their feminine identities and, therefore, the restrictions society placed on them, which included disenfranchisement. Jennie Hodgers, however, maintained her masculine disguise after the war and voted in postwar elections.1 Even though there is no evidence that she voted during the war, it would certainly stand to reason that she did and that her patriotism likely led her to cast her lot for Lincoln, a fellow Illinoisan. Lincoln’s reelection ensured that the war would continue to rage, which it did for several more months. Upon its conclusion, millions of soldiers had experienced untold suffering, many of whom were involved in the struggles for Mississippi. Marching right next to the men was an unknown number of women in male disguise. These female fighters inspired Mississippi author William Faulkner to create a character for his 1938 novel, The Unvanquished, named Drusilla Sartoris, who disguised herself as a 160

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man and fought with her uncle’s cavalry regiment in order to avenge the deaths of her fiancé and father. She was a strong yet conflicted woman, torn between her enjoyment of her newfound life of freedom in male disguise and her duty to conform to Victorian societal standards. In the end, Drusilla was caught between two worlds. She could not return to the traditional life she left. Yet there was no place in Victorian society for her and her beliefs of feminine freedom. So the embattled Sartoris just simply walked off the pages of Faulkner’s tale and disappeared, much like many of the real female fighters whose accounts abruptly ended after discovery. Like the fictional Drusilla, the true women who fought in the Civil War chose to live an important part of their lives in contrast, rather than in comparison, to their peers. Many of them were anonymous, their stories, like their names, forgotten and lost to history. It is interesting to contemplate the circumstances that existed in their lives that ultimately propelled them from the relative safety of their domestic sphere to a place of unappreciated obscurity, societal conflict, suffering, and death. War was the domain of men. Yet, women, too, were behind the rifle. They, too, made the ultimate sacrifice for their respective causes and lie beneath headstones marked as unknowns. Consequently, the stories of these women warriors deserve to be told so that we may honor them while simultaneously adding a new layer of understanding to Mississippi’s Civil War history.

ADDENDUM

Myths and Mysteries There are accounts of women soldiers whose tales, while containing an element of truth, are also riddled with errors. Some tend to be suspect and may be mere hoaxes. Others may be the products of opportunistic women or enterprising newspaper editors attempting to increase readership and, therefore, income. More research is required in order to validate these chronicles, which, if proven true, would confirm that the following women served as soldiers in Mississippi during the Civil War. Such is the case of Caroline Reynolds of Colonel Abel Streight’s 51st Indiana Infantry, part of Buell’s Army of the Ohio at the Federal center during the siege of Corinth. According to the newspaper articles, twentyyear-old Reynolds had followed her lover to Nashville, where she joined the ranks. If this was the case, then in May 1863, she would have been captured along with everybody else in the unit by Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest near Gaylesville, Georgia, during Streight’s ill-fated venture on unbroken and ornery mules across northern Alabama. After the 51st Indiana was initially sent to Belle Isle and exchanged at City Point, the Hoosiers ended up at Camp Chase, where they were furloughed. The regiment was then reorganized at Camp Morton in Indianapolis, where they served as guards. There, Caroline was discovered in October 1863. A reporter described her as “rather above medium height, light complexion, and quite handsome.” Reynolds claimed she had been serving as a soldier and participated in several battles with the unit. However, the question arises whether she made up the story to explain why she was caught wearing a uniform in camp. A newspaper article mentioned that she had 162

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been in camp for “several days.” Yet it would seem that if she had indeed been a soldier, she would have been with them from the time they arrived. Furthermore, this case bears the earmarks of a woman scorned. According to the newspaper articles, Caroline’s lover whom she followed was named Shirley, and he had promised to marry her. A check of the roster revealed there were three soldiers with such a name: Ira and Edmund Shurley (Shirley) in Company A and Thomas Shirley in Company C. Both Ira and Thomas were discharged for disability before Caroline was discovered. Edmund was the only one active in the unit in October 1863, so he must be the beau in question. Before the war, Caroline lived in Kentucky with her father and sister, so she probably met Private Shirley at some point during the months the 51st Indiana was stationed in her state in early 1862. She fell in love with him then and followed him to Nashville, where he gave his word that he would wed her upon his return from the war. But the fact that she told the press that “he promised to marry her” suggests that Edmund perhaps made an empty vow and then abandoned her after he left for the front. What may have happened is that while anxiously waiting to hear from Shirley over the following year, Reynolds learned that the 51st Indiana was at Camp Morton and, out of desperation, decided to sneak into their camp while posing as a soldier in order to find her deceptive lover. Apparently, Edmund did not come to her defense after military officials removed her from camp, and he married someone else after the war.1 Such clues tend to point to an unrequited love. Or was Reynolds a legitimate soldier who disguised herself at Nashville and followed her sweetheart and the Hoosiers to Mississippi, where they participated in the siege of Corinth? Newspapers simply fail to provide enough information to confirm this story as related by Caroline Reynolds, yet give enough clues to cause some doubt. Further research is required. While Reynolds existed, the same cannot be definitively stated about an unknown woman from Kalamazoo, Michigan, whose lengthy account appeared in multiple newspapers, including the Wyandotte Commercial Gazette on November 28, 1863. According to the story, which was reprinted from the St. Louis Democrat, the anonymous orphan served for two years in an unnamed Michigan unit with her brothers. She was medium sized and had dark, curly hair and dark eyes. During her service, the woman soldier was slightly wounded in the Battle of Baton Rouge on August 5,

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1862. Those details identify the unit as the 6th Michigan Infantry, which was raised in the Kalamazoo area and was the only Michigan unit at that particular engagement. However, suspicion of the validity of the story stems from the lack of verifiable factors involving an unnamed major, who is an important character in the story because the woman soldier was his cousin and served as his orderly. According to the narrative, he lived in northern Illinois and resigned in early 1863. Thus far, research has failed to yield the identity of a major of the 6th Michigan Infantry who matches that description. Either this story is a complete fabrication, or it is true but contains errors. Another possibility is that the inconsistencies stem from a deliberate attempt to protect the identities of the individuals involved. If the account is true about the woman soldier in the 6th Michigan Infantry, then that means she served garrison duty on Ship Island off the Mississippi Gulf Coast from March 13 to April 14, 1862.2 Ship Island allegedly served as the location of a remarkable event involving another woman soldier. On May 23, 1862, the North Star published in Danville, Vermont, noted a letter written by a soldier stationed on the island. The missive was directed to an individual in Brandon, Mississippi, and mentioned a Vermont soldier who gave birth while on guard duty. Unfortunately, the newspaper did not name the letter writer, the recipient, or the woman soldier. Thus far, no corroborating sources have come to light, which makes this particular story suspect. However, as unbelievable as this incident is, it is not a singular event. Nor is it an event unique to the Civil War alone, as noted in the aforementioned account of “Luke Surrey,” a woman soldier from Vicksburg who reportedly bore a child while serving during the Mexican War. As for the Civil War, enlisted soldiers and high-ranking officers alike reported multiple women giving birth while serving in the ranks the same year as the incident at Ship Island and each subsequent year of the war. There is some question regarding the validity of these stories, however. Half of the accounts involve women soldiers who had been promoted to either corporal or sergeant and gave birth while serving picket duty. These common threads that appear in a significant number of the stories hint at the possibility that at least some may have been the result of copycat hoaxes.3 A woman who already had children when she allegedly served in Mississippi with the 63rd Illinois Infantry was Louise E. Bliss. According to the story that the twenty-year-old Austrian presented to the press,

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patriotism drove her to enlist in Company G. While in Mississippi, she received several wounds, leaving scars to which newspaper reporters bore witness. During the Vicksburg Campaign, she gained valuable information while engaging in espionage in the guise of a man who was disguised as a woman. After mustering out at the conclusion of the war, Louise claimed to have married John Silber, with whom she had served in Company G. But his untimely death left her a widow soon after the couple wed. In reality, Louise and John were married before the war and had two sons. And instead of fighting in Mississippi, she was apparently in Illinois cheating on John while he was away serving with the 63rd Illinois Infantry. According to divorce documents, witnesses claimed to have seen several men visiting her home in 1863 and 1864. And then by 1865, Louise, who went by her middle name, Elizabeth, before the divorce, had allegedly abandoned John altogether for an unnamed German man with whom she moved to St. Louis. She never appeared in court to dispute the accusations of adultery, and the judge dissolved the marriage in 1866. John remarried, and Louise eventually moved with their elder son to Wyoming. There, she married a former soldier, Leander C. Bliss, whose son from a previous marriage, John M. “Jack” Bliss, was a noted outlaw. Three years following Leander’s death, while married to her third husband, Louise filed for a pension based on his service in the 3rd California Infantry. The pension was denied. And then in 1911, while married for the fourth time, she filed for a pension based on her own alleged service. However, investigators were unable to locate her name on the rolls of the 63rd Illinois. As a result, the Pension Bureau deemed her claim to be false and denied it. Apparently, that was the last time Louise E. Bliss attempted to seek governmental compensation for military service before her death in 1928 in an Idaho asylum at the age of 85.4 Another Federal woman with a shaky Vicksburg connection was teenager Fanny Wilson of Williamsburg, New York. Described as having “a fair face, though somewhat tanned, with a rather masculine voice, sprightly, [and] somewhat educated,” she and her friend Nellie Graves enlisted in the 24th New Jersey Infantry in order to be near their sweethearts. Fanny’s lover was killed at Vicksburg. Both girls ended up falling ill and were transferred to a hospital in Cairo, where they were discovered and discharged. Nellie’s condition was more severe, and she was detained in the hospital, while Fanny recovered and was released, after which she

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traveled to Memphis, where she resumed her career as a ballerina after previously performing in cities such as Washington, DC, Baltimore, and New Orleans. But Wilson possessed a “decided leaning for the service” and enlisted in Company E of the 3rd Illinois Cavalry. However, her stint as a trooper was short lived as she served for only two weeks before she was discovered while riding through the streets of Memphis with a trooper of Company H of the regiment. Both were arrested. The problem with this story is that the 24th New Jersey was not at Vicksburg. The unit was at Fredericksburg, and perhaps it was there instead of Vicksburg where Fanny’s sweetheart was killed and her identity discovered the first time. The Long Island girl may have then joined one of the units of the IX Corps that was sent west from the Army of the Potomac. In that regard, she could have still participated in the Vicksburg Campaign. Perhaps the timeframe reported could have been wrong and that she served with the 3rd Illinois Cavalry at Vicksburg. On the other hand, the newspapers could have simply garbled the whole story and Wilson was not at Vicksburg at all. Further doubt of her involvement in the campaign stems from an advertisement in the Baltimore Sun appearing on July 29, 1863, for a ballet starring Fanny Wilson. If this woman is the same Fanny Wilson of the 3rd Illinois Cavalry, then she was obviously still out east at the time of the Vicksburg Campaign. But despite some of the incorrect details, her service appears to be legitimate. After Fanny was discovered in Memphis, newspapers reported that she was compelled to resume feminine dress and was to be sent north to her family. However, that was not to be the case. Meanwhile, Private H. C. Steele, the trooper arrested with Wilson, was court martialed for conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline. He was convicted and sentenced to sixty days hard labor without pay at Fort Pickering. On September 14, 1864, a month after newspapers reported that she was to be sent home, nineteen-year-old Fanny Wilson died of acute dysentery at Overton Hospital. She was originally buried in the cemetery at Fort Pickering, but her remains were reinterred in Memphis National Cemetery with the rest of her male comrades. Wilson is buried in section B, grave 621. Her resting place is marked with a military headstone.5 Around the same time Fanny Wilson died, the Charlotte Times reported on September 30, 1864, that a woman soldier from Mississippi passed through the city on a train bound for Richmond. “She wore a

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black belt with a chain attached. She is said to be from Mississippi, and has participated in several hard fought battles. . . . She wore a straw cap, set jauntily on her head, adorned with two rows of miniature gilt buttons.” This woman had risen to the rank of captain through a series of promotions for distinguished gallantry. While the press did not reveal her identity, she may well have been the woman who called herself Loreta Velazquez. Reporters spotted her in Richmond the year before and described her as a captain from Mississippi. So she very well could have returned to the Confederate capital. Assuming the alias “Harry T. Buford,” Velazquez claimed to have fought in several battles. However, contemporaries as well as current scholars have questioned the veracity of her tales which she published in her 1876 memoirs, The Woman in Battle: A Narrative of the Exploits, Adventures, and Travels of Madame Loreta Janeta Velázquez, Otherwise Known as Lieutenant Harry T. Buford, Confederate States Army. Therefore, if this woman passing through Charlotte was indeed Velazquez, she may not have been a captain from Mississippi but merely posing as one during her odd adventures.6 Another unusual case involves “Helene Violet B.” of the 12th Iowa Infantry. During the regiment’s first reunion in 1879, the young daughter of Lieutenant Abner Dunham recited a poem, which was ultimately printed in a pamphlet detailing the proceedings of the reunion. This inspired Helene to write her own verses and send them to young Florence. She signed the card, “The only ‘Fighting Woman’ who carried a gun and used it, in the Twelfth Iowa Volunteer Infantry.” This baffling revelation sent the former soldiers on a hunt to locate their female comrade, who claimed to have served the entirety of the war without being discovered. Multiple newspapers carried the story of the woman soldier and the quest to determine her identity. But it was not until the second reunion in 1884 when Colonel John H. Stibbs announced to the attendees that the mystery had been solved. He explained that it was a case of a “dual existence.” A soldier had approached him in confidence and admitted that Helene Violet was his deceased sister and that he had carried her spirit with him since he was an infant. The soldier was in constant communication with her and she provided guidance. Stibbs further explained that the poem read by Florence Dunham at the first reunion had aroused Helene’s “womanly nature,” and she was determined to write to her. “When she chooses to speak for herself, he [the soldier] is compelled to act as her amanuensis,

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and thus it happened that she made herself known to our regiment.”7 Colonel Stibbs concluded by asking the attendees to make no attempts at determining the identity of the soldier of the 12th Iowa Infantry who, along with the spirit of Helene, fought at Corinth, Vicksburg, Meridian, and Tupelo.

NOTES

INTRODUCTION

1. “Women in the War,” United States Service Magazine, 3, no. 3 (March 1865): 270. 2. DeAnne Blanton and Lauren Cook, They Fought Like Demons (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002), 202–3; Mary Elizabeth Massey, Women in the Civil War (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 79; Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Billy Yank (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995), 339. 3. North-Eastern Daily Gazette (Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire, England), October 13, 1890. CHAPTER 1

1. Mary Livermore, My Story of the War (Hartford, CT: A.D. Worthington & Co., 1896), 119–20; Blanton and Cook, They Fought Like Demons, 7; Richard Hall, Women on the Civil War Battlefront (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2006), 11. 2. “Another Female Soldier,” The Huntington Democrat, January 30, 1862. 3. Doris Cerveri, Nevada: A Colorful Past, Vol. II (Elko, NV: Nostalgia Press, 1990), 405. 4. “She Fought in Man’s Attire,” Independent Record, October 4, 1891; “Patriotism Among the Colored Population,” Daily Constitutionalist, August 2, 1862, from Vicki Betts, “Women Soldiers, Spies, and Vivandières: Articles from Civil War Newspapers,” Scholar Works at the University of Texas at Tyler: Special Topics (2016), Paper 28; T. Otis Baker Papers, Z/00072.000/S/, box 1, folder 6, Mississippi Department of Archives and History. 5. “Female Drummer,” Philadelphia Press, October 8, 1863; US 1860 Census, Danville, Pittsylvania County, VA, J. E. Adams household, Ancestry.com; E. A. W. Burbage to Mrs. Kate Huffman, December 27, 1862, Mary Ann Clark letters, SC 1012, Kentucky Historical Society, available online at http://www.kyhistory.com/cdm/compoundobject/collection/ MS/id/60/rec/2; “Our Cairo Letter,” Philadelphia Enquirer, December 10, 1862; “Love and Warfare,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 21, 1863; “The Story of a Girl Soldier,” St. Johnsbury Caledonian, May 22, 1863; Louisville Daily Journal, April 29, 1863. 6. Blanton and Cook, They Fought Like Demons, 25; Sarah Morgan Dawson, A Confederate Girl’s Diary, ed. James I. Robertson (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1960), 25. 169

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7. “A Female Recruit,” Janesville Weekly Gazette, June 3, 1864; “Pants Versus Petticoats,” Richmond Daily Examiner, October 31, 1864, from Betts, “Women Soldiers, Spies, and Vivandières”; Albert Westgate to his brother, November 2, 1862, copy of transcript courtesy Janine Delcamp; Martin N. Bertera and Kim Crawford, The 4th Michigan Infantry in the Civil War (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2010), 45. 8. RG 109, M269, Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers from Mississippi Units, William O. Day, 17th Mississippi Infantry, National Archives, accessed from Fold3. com; Blanton and Cook, They Fought Like Demons, 4. 9. Lauren Cook Burgess, ed., An Uncommon Soldier: The Civil War Letters of Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, alias Pvt. Lyons Wakeman, 153rd New York State Volunteers, 1862–1864 (Pasadena, MD: The Minerva Center, 1994), 9–10, 18. 10. Register of Enlistments in the US Army, 1798–1914, entry for James Smith, Ancestry. com; “Fought by Her Husband’s Side: Civil War Romance of an Ohio Woman,” The Sun, October 14, 1906; Patty Beil and George Beil, Lady Rebel: The Story of Private Jane Perkins, CSA (Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, Inc.: 2003), 29. Nannie Davis Smith, “Whirligigs of Time,” Confederate Veteran 36, no. 8 (August 1928): 289; “Female Soldiers,” Macomb Eagle, February 25, 1865; “Female Soldiers,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 11, 1865; Bradford Family Collection, DAL.MSS.024, Duxbury Rural & Historical Society. 11. Shelby Harriel, “Charlotte Hope, Facts and Fiction,” Forbidden, Hidden, and Forgotten: Women Soldiers of the Civil War (blog), December 30, 2014, https://forbiddenhiddenforgot ten.blogspot.com/2014/12/charlotte-hope.html. 12. E. A. W. Burbage to Mrs. Kate Huffman, December 27, 1862, Mary Ann Clark letters, SC 1012, Kentucky Historical Society. 13. Julia Wilbur Alexandria Diaries, Haverford College, The Quaker Collection, Haverford PA, transcription by volunteers at the Alexandria Archaeology Museum, Alexandria, VA, p. 497 and 511. http://alexandriava.gov/uploadedFiles/historic/info/civilwar/ JuliaWilburDiary1860to1866.pdf; Dr. Anita L. Henderson to the author, March 6, 2017. Dr. Henderson has researched Maria Lewis for years and presented a paper, “The Search for Maria Lewis, Black Female Trooper of the 8th NY Cavalry,” at the Society of Women in the Civil War Conference, July 2015. 14. Burke Davis, Sherman’s March (New York: Random House, 1980), 65; George S. Bradley, The Star Corps; or, Notes of an Army Chaplain, During Sherman’s Famous “March to the Sea” (Milwaukee: Jermain & Brightman, 1865), 192–93. 15. “A Young Lady Eager to Be a Soldier,” Howard Tribune, February 4, 1864. There is a Daniel Cook listed as a 3rd sergeant in Company A of the 5th Kansas State Militia who may be her brother. Blanton and Cook, They Fought Like Demons, 33, 38. CHAPTER 2

1. Albert Westgate to his brother, November 2, 1862, copy of transcript courtesy Janine Delcamp; Bertera and Crawford, The 4th Michigan Infantry in the Civil War, 45; Albert D. Richardson, The Secret Service, the Field, the Dungeon, and the Escape (Hartford,

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CT: American Publishing, 1865), 175; Shelby Harriel, “The Woman Soldier and the Golden Circle,” Forbidden, Hidden, and Forgotten: Women Soldiers of the Civil War (blog), February 24, 2016, https://forbiddenhiddenforgotten.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-woman-soldier -and-golden-circle.html. 2. RG 94, National Archives, Carded Medical Records, Charles Freeman, 52nd Ohio Infantry. 3. “Women in the War,” United States Service Magazine 3, no. 3 (March 1865): 271; Burgess, An Uncommon Soldier, 81–82; US National Cemetery Interment Control Forms, 1928–1962, Ancestry.com. 4. Benjamin F. Campbell diary, Co. B, 36th Illinois Infantry, entry for September 24, 1863, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library. 5. M. A. Harvey to “My dear Eva,” November 15, 1862, Manuscripts of the American Civil War, MSN/CW 5006-1-F1, Rare Books and Special Collections, University of Notre Dame, available online at https://rarebooks.nd.edu/digital/civil_war/letters/harvey-ma/5066-01 .shtml. 6. “The Grave of a Heroine,” Helena Independent, June 24, 1890; Robert Scott Davis, Ghosts and Shadows of Andersonville: Essays on the Secret Social Histories of America’s Deadliest Prison (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2006), 147; Blanton and Cook, They Fought Like Demons, 79–80. 7. J. Albert Libby, “Sketch of a Southern Prison,” in Memorial Exercises Held in Castleton, Vermont, in the Year 1885, comp. John M. Currier (Albany, NY: Joel Munsell’s Sons, 1885), 55; Private Samuel Elliott, 7th Pennsylvania Reserves, “A Diary of Prison Life: Andersonville and Florence, SC,” entry for October 31, 1864, http://www.pa-roots.com/pacw/ reserves/7thres/eliotdiary.html; John McElroy, Andersonville: A Story of Rebel Military Prisons (D. R. Locke, 1879), Nook edition, 396; “The Grave of a Heroine,” Helena Independent, June 24, 1890. 8. US National Cemetery Interment Control Forms, 1928–1962, Ancestry.com. 9. David, Ghosts of Andersonville, 151; Quartermaster General’s Office, Roll of Honor: Names of Soldiers Who Died in Defense of the American Union, No. XIX (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1869): 222. 10. W. J. W. Kerr, “Sad Ending of a Wedding Trip,” Confederate Veteran 23, no. 1 ( January 1915): 318. 11. “Florence Budwin,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 28, 1865; “The New South,” New York Tribune, May 9, 1870; Quartermaster General’s Office, Roll of Honor, 222. 12. “The Grave of a Heroine,” Helena Independent, June 24, 1890; Elliott did not have first-hand knowledge of this account, and it is difficult to say for sure whether this woman was indeed a soldier, or whether individuals erroneously confused this account with that of civilian Margaret Leonard, who was held in Commandant Henry Wirz’s quarters until she became disagreeable, resulting in Wirz sending her north to Castle Thunder prison in Richmond. 13. John Worrell Northrop, Chronicles from the Diary of a War Prisoner in Andersonville and Other Military Prisons on the South in 1864 (Wichita, KS: Wining Printery, 1904), 116.

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14. Mary A. Shearman, “A Visit to Andersonville,” Hours at Home 5, no. 5 (September 1867): 414; Kevin Drew, Camp Sumter: A Pictorial History of Andersonville Prison (Americus, GA: Good Image Printers, 1989), 9. 15. W. D., “Andersonville,” Boston Daily Advertiser, April 18, 1868; US Burial Registers, Military Posts and National Cemeteries, 1862–1960, Ancestry.com. The database maintained by the Andersonville National Historic Site notes that the March 22 date of death is approximate. 16. Beil and Beil, Lady Rebel, 40, 47; Confederate Prisoners of War, Register of Prisoners at Point Lookout, Ancestry.com; Report of C. T. Alexander, Acting Medical Inspector, to Col. Hoffman, Commissary General of Prisoners, July 9, 1864, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1896), series 1, vol. 7, 450 (hereafter cited as Official Records). 17. “Worcester County Jail and House of Correction at Fitchburg,” Boston Traveler, December 27, 1864; Beil and Beil, Lady Rebel, 67–68. She appeared to be healthy when she was captured since there were no reports to the contrary; Case Files of Investigation by Levi C. Turner and Lafayette C. Baker, 1861–1866, (Turner), file 2169, accessed from Fold3.com. 18. RG 153, National Archives, Judge Advocate General Court Martial Case File LL 621 for Barbara Ann Dunavan. 19. “Arrested for Smuggling,” Vicksburg Daily Herald, August 20, 1864; United States Records of Confederate Prisoners of War, 1861–1865 and Register of Confederate Soldiers, Sailors and Citizens Who Died in Federal Prisons and Military Hospitals in the North, 1861–1865, accessed from Ancestry.com. 20. Shelby Harriel, “Rising Tides and Fallen Heroines at Alton,” Forbidden, Hidden, and Forgotten: Women Soldiers of the Civil War (blog), September 3, 2016, https://forbiddenhid denforgotten.blogspot.com/2016/09/rising-tides-and-fallen-heroines-at.html. CHAPTER 3

1. Blanton and Cook, They Fought Like Demons, 8. 2. Blanton and Cook, They Fought Like Demons, 91–92. 3. Jack Hurst, Nathan Bedford Forrest (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), 114; J. K. Magie, “Life in the Army,” Macomb Journal, October 10, 1865. Magie was with the 78th Illinois, which landed at Dover after the conclusion of the action. On February 7, 1862, four days after the battle, he wrote about visiting the battlefield, which was published in the Macomb Weekly Journal on February 20, 1863. In this account, he used almost the exact same wording as the 1865 version to describe the burial details interring the dead with no mention of the woman. He either had a friend present at the battle who told him later about the woman, or he may have seen this account published elsewhere and included it in his post-war account that appeared in 1865. 4. Blanton and Cook, They Fought Like Demons, 95–96; Hall, Women on the Civil War Battlefront, 133. 5. Garrett V. Deacon to “Frend Middleton,” July 31, 1863, letter in the private collection of Glen Wurst, Meadville, Pennsylvania; RG 94, Compiled Military Service Records, Emerson Middleton, 12th New Jersey Infantry, National Archives.

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6. Garrett V. Deacon to “Frend Middleton,” July 31, 1863, letter in private collection of Glen Wurst, Meadville, Pennsylvania; Official Records, series 1, vol. 17, part 1, 378. 7. “The Hero of Pickett’s Old Brigade,” Confederate Veteran 1, no. 6 ( June 1893): 174; “The Hero of Pickett’s Division,” Confederate War Journal 2, no. 3 ( June 1894): 47; “Confederate Girl Wife Who Fell at Gettysburg,” in Camp Fires of the Confederacy, ed. Ben LaBree (Louisville, KY: Courier-Journal Job Printing Company, 1898), 356. 8. Mary A. Gardner Holland, ed., Our Army Nurses (Boston: B. Wilkins & Co., 1895), 341. 9. Rutherford B. Hayes to E. C. Arthur, June 10, 1889, MS in Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library; Webb Family Correspondence, Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library, Fremont, Ohio. 10. Civil War Memoirs of Captain Russell Hastings, 23rd Ohio Infantry, entry for May 10, 1864, Manuscripts Collections, Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library, transcript online at http://www.rbhayes.org/research/chapters-4-through-6/; Diary of Pvt. James J. Wood, 34th Ohio Infantry, MMS 1144, entry for May 10, 1864, Bowling Green State University, transcript online at https://lib.bgsu.edu/finding_aids/items/show/1760. 11. Diary of Pvt. John Holliday, 91st Ohio Volunteer Infantry, entry for May 10, 1864, John Holliday Diaries and Photographs, 1864–1865 (Ms2012–028), Virginia Tech Special Collections Online, https://digitalsc.lib.vt.edu/CivilWar/Ms2012-028. 12. Shelby Harriel, “Cedar Creek and the Bell Cousins,” Forbidden, Hidden, and Forgotten: Women Soldiers of the Civil War (blog), October 20, 2014, https://forbiddenhiddenforgotten .blogspot.com/2014/10/cedar-creek-and-bell-cousins.html. 13. Edward D. C. Campbell and Kym S. Rice, eds. A Woman’s War: Southern Women, the Civil War, and the Confederate Legacy (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996), 92–93. 14. Paul B. Kerr, Civil War Surgeon-Biography of James Langstaff Dunn, MD, (AuthorHouse, 2012), 135; Robert D. Jenkins, Battle of Peach Tree Creek: Hood’s First Sortie, 20 July 1864 (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2013), 389; John Stiles Castle, ed., Grandfather Was a Drummer Boy: A Civil War Diary & Letters of Charles B. Stiles (Solon, OH: Evans Printing Company, 1986), 136. 15. Stephn F. Fleharty, Our Regiment: A History of the 102d Illinois Infantry Volunteers, (Chicago: Brewster & Hanscom, 1865), 94–95. Though this is a regimental history of the 102nd Illinois Infantry, the account of the woman soldier appears in a section chronicling events as related by soldiers of the 129th Illinois Infantry. This unit was on the right of Harrison’s brigade and faced Featherston’s Mississippians. 16. Jenkins, Battle of Peach Tree Creek, 99; unsent letter by unknown author of the 93rd Illinois Infantry and addressed to friend Matt Landon, Co. H, 93rd Illinois Infantry. Letter in private collection of owner who chooses to remain anonymous, Woodbury, Minnesota. Transcription courtesy Shane Christen, Red Wing, Minnesota. 17. Gilbert Thompson journal, Library of Congress, unnumbered page following p. 272. Available online at http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mss95752.01. 18. “Flower Bed at Shiloh Yields Gruesome Find,” Memphis Press Scimitar, February 10, 1934; Mancil Milligan Jr. email to the author, December 24, 2015. Most sources say that a minié ball located near her body was what killed her. However, the article says it was a

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“trench mortal ball,” suggesting that it was an artillery shell. The article also says it was not known whether the woman was dressed in a uniform. However, why would she have been buried among eight other soldiers if she was not also a soldier? If she was not a soldier and her gender was known, the individuals who buried her would have interred her in her own grave instead of with men in accordance with Victorian mores of the time. CHAPTER 4

1. Raftman’s Journal (Clearfield, PA), April 10, 1861; Reading Times, January 11, 1862. 2. Jenkins, Battle of Peach Tree Creek, 273, 462–63. 3. Beulah M. D’Olive Price, ed. “Excerpts from the Diary of Walter Alexander Overton, 1860–1862,” Journal of Mississippi History 17, no. 3 ( July 1955): 199. 4. RG 109, M320, Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers from Louisiana Units, William Bradley, Miles’ Legion, National Archives, accessed from Fold3.com; T. Otis Baker Papers, Z/00072.000/S/, box 1, folder 6, Mississippi Department of Archives and History. While it will be impossible to determine who this girl was unless other sources come to light, a possibility is that she was the slave of Robert Bradley, who was a large slaveholder in Natchez. Considering the fact that she was light skinned, she likely was his child with one of his slaves and, therefore, may have enlisted using his surname. US 1860 Census-Slave Schedules, Ancestry.com. 5. John M. Stanyan, A History of the Eighth Regiment of New Hampshire Volunteers (Concord, NH: Ira C. Evans, 1892), 286. 6. RG 109, M320, Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers from Louisiana Units, George Bradley, Miles’ Legion, accessed from Fold3.com; US 1860 Census, Proctor Township, Crittendon County, Arkansas, George Bradley household, Ancestry.com. 7. Lawrence L. Hewitt and Arthur W. Bergeron Jr. eds., Port Hudson Hospital Ledger, 1862–1863 (Baton Rouge: Le Comite des Archives de la Louisiane, 1981), 98; Official Records, series 41, chapter 38, 173. 8. “Arresting Dress: A Timeline of Anti-Cross-Dressing Laws in the United States,” PBS NewsHour, May 31, 2015, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/arresting-dress -timeline-anti-cross-dressing-laws-u-s/. Contemporary newspapers from across the country documented women who were arrested for wearing men’s clothes. 9. Ellen Wilds, Far from Home: The Diary of Lt. William H. Peel 1863–1865 (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2005), 65; Carol Reardon, Pickett’s Charge in History and Memory (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 23; Jeffry D. Wert, Gettysburg, Day Three (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 216. 10. Garrett V. Deacon to “Frend Middleton,” July 31, 1863, letter in the private collection of Glen Wurst, Meadville, Pennsylvania. Report of Colonel Thomas A. Smyth, Official Records, series 1, vol. 27, part 1, 465. 11. Henry Schelling to Friend William, November 21, 1863, Letters of William F. Hertzog, Archives and Manuscripts, Chicago Historical Society. 12. Official Records, series 1, vol. 38, part 2, 140.

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13. Frank Moore, ed., The Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events, with Documents, Narratives, Illustrative Incidents, Poetry, Etc., Volume 11 (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1868), 250. 14. Jenkins, The Battle of Peach Tree Creek, 394–95, 414, 193, 205; Jacob D. Cox, Campaigns of the Civil War: Atlanta (New York: Charles Schribner’s Sons: 1882), 156; Judson L. Austin to his wife, July 21, 1864, Papers of Nina L. Ness ( Judson L. Austin Letters), folder 14, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, collection online at http://name.umdl .umich.edu/2011307.0014.001. 15. Jenkins, The Battle of Peach Tree Creek, 183; Fleharty, Our Regiment, 94–95. 16. Unpublished diary of Richard Reamer, Co. F, 122nd Illinois Infantry, entry for March 26, 1865, private collection of Steve Hicks, Roodhouse, Illinois; Paul Brueske, The Last Siege: The Mobile Campaign, Alabama 1865 (Havertown, PA: Casemate Publishers, 2018), 49–54; Leavenworth Times, October 29, 1863; Gallipolis Journal, January 28, 1864. CHAPTER 5

1. Steven Nathaniel Dossman, Campaign for Corinth: Blood in Mississippi (Abilene, TX: McWhiney Foundation Press, 2006), 13–14. 2. Mildred Throne, ed., The Civil War Diary of Cyrus F. Boyd: Fifteenth Iowa Infantry, 1861–1863 (Millwood, NY: Kraus Reprint Co., 1977), 44. 3. Fanny J. Anderson, ed., “The Shelly Papers,” Indiana Magazine of History 44, no. 2 (1948), 186. 4. The Daily Standard, April 30, 1870. 5. Image in the private collection of Joyce Henry, Charles City, Virginia. On the back of the photograph is hand written, “Catherine Lewis: 2nd Minn Vols.” The image was made at Giers & Co. National Portrait Gallery in Nashville, Tennessee, the location of which indicates the photograph is post war. 6. RG 94, Compiled Military Service Records, Frank Deming, 17th Ohio Infantry, National Archives. 7. Francis W. Tupper to Mr. and Mrs. William R. Tupper, June 17, 1862, SC 1565, folder 1, Manuscript Division, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library 8. Boyd, Diary, 44; Randy Bishop, Mississippi’s Civil War Battlefield (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing Company, 2010), 23. 9. Samuel B. Barron, The Lone Star Defenders: A Chronicle of the Third Texas Cavalry, Ross’ Brigade (New York: The Neale Publishing Co, 1908), 89. 10. William Ludlow, The Battle of Allatoona, October 5th, 1864 (Detroit, MI: Winn & Hammond, Printers and Binders, 1891), 36–37; Ephraim M. Anderson, Memoirs: Historical and Personal; Including the Campaigns of the First Missouri Confederate Brigade (St. Louis: Times Printing Co., 1868), 161. 11. Sam R. Watkins, Co. Aytch, ed. Ruth Hill Fulton McAllister (Franklin, TN: Providence House Publishers, 2007), 42; Dossman, Campaign for Corinth, 23; Michael Ballard, Civil War Mississippi: A Guide ( Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2000), 12.

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12. US 1860 Census, District 13, Davidson County, Tennessee, John King household, FamilySearch.org. 13. Report by Lieutenant Colonel Edward Prince, September 23, 1862, in Report on the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War at the Second Session Thirty-Eighth Congress, Volume. 3, Rosecrans’s Campaigns (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1865), 102, 105. 14. Dossman, Campaign for Corinth, 73–74; Official Records, series 1, vol. 17, part 1, 122; Peter Cozzens, The Darkest Days of the War: The Battles of Iuka & Corinth (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 75–76. 15. Bishop, Mississippi’s Civil War Battlefields, 45, 50. 16. Anderson, Memoirs, 237; Timothy B. Smith, Corinth 1862 (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2012), 222; James E. Payne, “The Sixth Missouri at Corinth,” Confederate Veteran 36, no. 12 (December 1928): 465; Cozzens, Darkest Days of the War, 242. 243, 248–49. 17. “Heroine of the Civil War Dies,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 17, 1907; RG 94, Compiled Military Service Records, Elizabeth Finner, 81st Ohio Infantry, National Archives. 18. Philip Sheridan, Personal Memoirs of P.H. Sheridan, Volume I (New York: Charles L. Webster & Company, 1888), 253–56. 19. Chicago Tribune, March 11, 1863; United States, Union Provost Marshal Files of Two or More Civilians, 1861–1866, file 12946, FamilySearch.org. 20. Charles Woodruff to Father, May 1, 1863, D. O. Woodruff correspondence, folder 13, Bentley Historical Library Civil War Collections Online, University of Michigan, available online at http://name.umdl.umich.edu/2011455.0013.001. 21. Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln Papers: Series 2. General Correspondence. 1858 to 1864, Ellie B. Reno to Abraham Lincoln, Monday, May 11, 1863, Letter from Female soldier. Manuscript/Mixed Material. Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/mal4255200/; Louisville Daily Journal, May 18, 1863; Daniel Larned to his sister, May 14–16, 1863, Daniel Reed Larned Correspondence, vol. 3, Library of Congress; William Marvel, Burnside (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 141; Case Files of Approved Pension Applications of Widows and Other Dependents of Navy Veterans, compiled ca. 1861–ca. 1910, certificate #4167, Francis Reno, Fold3.com. 22. Union Provost Marshal Files of Two or More Civilians, 1861–1866, file 12946, FamilySearch.org; Benjamin F. Travis, The Story of the Twenty-Fifth Michigan (Kalamazoo, MI: Kalamazoo Publishing Company, 1897), 77, 319–21; Louisville Daily Courier, March 22, 1866. 23. Pittsburgh Daily Commercial, May 9, 1864; “A Technical Point Disposed of by the President—A Lady Soldier,” The Jeffersonian, November 10, 1864; “From the 107th Regiment,” Hornellsville Weekly Tribune, December 3, 1863; Pittsburgh Daily Commercial, May 9, 1864; “Female Soldier Wounded,” Nashville Daily Union, June 16, 1864; “A Lincoln Story,” Scranton Tribune, August 16, 1900; Fort Wayne Daily Gazette, August 30, 1864. 24. New Hampshire, Marriage and Divorce Records, 1659–1947, Ancestry.com; Forehand vs. Forehand divorce records, Division of Archives and Records Management, Concord, New Hampshire. 25. Elizabeth Forehand Adams and Helen Davis Lamb, A New England Inheritance (Corydon, NH: New Hampshire Historical Society, 2016), 183–91; Union Provost Marshals’s Papers, 1861–1867, entry for Mary Wise, alias “Soldier Jim,” Ancestry.com.

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26. James Rowe Adams, “A Confederate Spy in the White House?” Intelligencer 17, no. 3 (Winter/Spring 2010): 29–37; Forehand vs. Forehand divorce records, Division of Archives and Records Management, Concord, New Hampshire. 27. Dossman. Campaign for Corinth, 86–107. CHAPTER 6

1. Frederick L. Haywood to his sister, Loesa, April 6, 1863, Kansas State Historical Society, available online at http://www.kansasmemory.org/item/225893. 2. Shelby Harriel, “‘Brave as a Lion’: Alfred J. Luther . . . Or Someone Else?” Forbidden, Hidden, and Forgotten: Women Soldiers of the Civil War (blog), June 5, 2016, https:// forbiddenhiddenforgotten.blogspot.com/2016/06/alfred-j-luther-brave-as-lion.html; RG 94, Compiled Service Records, Alfred J. Luther, 1st Kansas Infantry, National Archives. 3. Henry Clinton Parkhurst Collection, MS 16, Box 3, Civil War History Scrapbook, 1870, Vol. II, p. 319–20, State Historical Society of Iowa. 4. US National Cemetery Interment Control Forms, 1928–1962, Ancestry.com. 5. Wayne C. Temple, ed., The Civil War Letters of Henry C. Bear (Harrogate, TN: Lincoln Memorial University Press, 1961), 6. 6. V. A. White to Jane Trail, February 6, 1866, private collection of Thomas P. Lowry. White joined Company D, 1st Michigan Engineers and Mechanics and was known as “Little Pete” by her male comrades. Her letter was postmarked from Au Sable, Iosco County, Michigan. According to marriage records on FamilySearch.org, she may have been the woman named Virginia A. White, originally from Alabama, who married John D. Abbey in 1866. 7. Memphis Bulletin, December 19, 1862. Canadian Lou may be Lou Morris, who was arrested and fined $25 for violating orders with respect to “houses of ill-fame,” according to the Memphis Daily Appeal of May 30, 1862. This may be the same woman known as Louisa Morris who claimed to have served in the “Red Rovers” of the 10th Missouri State Militia Cavalry and the 21st Missouri Infantry as “William Morris” as reported in the Memphis Argus, August 18, 1864. 8. Bishop, Mississippi’s Civil War Battlefields, 101–11. 9. James B. Swan, Chicago’s Irish Legion: The 90th Illinois Volunteers in the Civil War (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2009), 40–43; “Francis Miller, Female Soldier,” Memphis Bulletin, April 1, 1863. 10. Swan, Chicago’s Irish Legion, 23–24; “Francis Miller, Female Soldier,” Memphis Bulletin, April 1, 1863; “About Soldiering,” Bloomington Weekly Pantograph, April 20, 1864. 11. Thomas Quinn vs. Mary Quinn, divorce case, #236, Bureau County Courthouse, Princeton, Illinois. 12. US 1850 Census, Lamoille, Bureau County, Shaw and Cokely households, Ancestry. com; Common law case #1036, Bureau County Courthouse, Princeton, Illinois; 1855 Illinois State Census, Lamoille, Bureau County, Peter Quinn household, Ancestry.com. 13. Common law case #1036, Bureau County Courthouse, Princeton, Illinois. 14. Thomas Quinn vs. Mary Quinn, divorce case #236, Bureau County Courthouse, Princeton, Illinois; Peter Quinn vs. Mary Quinn, divorce case #267, common law case #1070, Bureau County Courthouse, Princeton, Illinois.

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15. Peter Quinn probate records, case #1901, Bureau County, Illinois probate records, FamilySearch.org. 16. Cincinnati Enquirer, May 23, 1909; Pittsburgh Daily Commercial, March 19, 1864; Annie Wittenmyer, Under the Guns: A Woman’s Reminiscences of the Civil War (Boston, MA: E. B. Stillings & Co., 1895), 17–20. 17. Nashville Daily Union, October 9, 1862. It was not until early twentieth century newspapers carried her story when the name Quinn began to appear in connection with her. Cincinnati Enquirer, May 23, 1909. The pieces began to come together as a result of this article. 18. Fanny Lee to Dear Friend, August 20, 1864, Bradford Family Collection, DAL. MSS.024, Duxbury Rural & Historical Society; “Romance in Real Life,” Indianapolis Daily Journal, April 11, 1862. This newspaper article gives Marian McKenzie’s name as Harriet Brown, which she admitted to the reporter was not her real name. It contains details that match McKenzie’s story, such as her connection with Britain, Canada, and Chicago as well as her service as a nurse and her enlistment at Newport, Kentucky, in the 23rd Kentucky Infantry. RG 94, M397, Compiled Service Records of Volunteer Union Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Kentucky, Henry Fitzallen, accessed from Fold3. com; “A Female Soldier in Custody—An Eventful Career,” Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, December 25, 1862. 19. Wittenmyer, Under the Guns, 20. 20. Richard Miller Devens, Pictorial Book of Anecdotes and Incidents of the War of the Rebellion (Hartford, CT: Hartford Publishing Co., 1867), 173–74; Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-49588, available online at https://www.loc.gov/resource/ppmsca.49588/; Holland, Our Army Nurses, 230. 21. Union Provost Marshal Files of Two or More Civilians, 1861–1866, file 12946, FamilySearch.org. 22. “Romance and Female Gallantry,” Pittsburgh Daily Commercial, March 19, 1864; “The Story of a Soldier Girl,” Nashville Dispatch, March 7, 1863; “Story of a Female Fighter,” New York Times, April 21, 1864; “Woman Was Soldier in Union Army,” Gallipolis Bulletin, May 26, 1919; US 1850 Census, Lamoille, Bureau County, Illinois, Shaw household, FamilySearch. org; Wittenmyer, Under the Guns, 19. 23. Livermore, My Story of the War, 113–14; “Off for the Wars,” Chicago Tribune, July 13, 1861; “The Daughter of the Regiment,” Chicago Tribune, July 15, 1861. According to the Illinois Civil War Muster and Descriptive Rolls Database from the Illinois State Archives and service records in the National Archives, a John McLaughlin, age thirty, from Cass County mustered in Company F on June 17, 1861, and discharged in Chicago on July 2, 1861, with “no record of order or cause.” This individual looks promising as a candidate for the woman in question. The age is an issue, however, along with the date of discharge. http://www.ilsos .gov/isaveterans/civilmustersrch.jsp. Entry for John McLaughlin. RG 94, Compiled Military Service Records, John McLaughlin, 19th Illinois Infantry, National Archives. 24. “A Lady Soldier,” The New Berne Times, April 2, 1864; “A Gallant Female SoldierRomantic History,” Nashville Dispatch, March 23, 1864; Probate record from Calhoun County, Iowa, where Thomas Quinn assumed guardianship of Frances’s daughter, Mary L. Angel, in 1887 after the death of her husband, Matthew Angel, in 1884. Frances/Elizabeth

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had died in 1872. Illinois State Archives, Illinois Civil War Muster and Descriptive Rolls Database, entry for Thomas Quinn, http://www.ilsos.gov/isaveterans/civilmustersrch.jsp; US 1850 Census, Lamoille, Bureau County, Illinois, George Shaw household, Ancestry.com. 25. Nashville Daily Union, October 9, 1862; “Francis Miller, Female Soldier,” Memphis Bulletin, April 1, 1863; “Sketch of the Army Life of James Madison Jones from April 12, 1861 to Oct. 4, 1864,” manuscript, SC0890, Indiana Historical Society, 89. Jones never named this woman soldier. However, the details he provided about her suffering a leg wound while attempting to escape capture, being exchanged, and then treated in a Nashville hospital indicate the woman was Elizabeth Quinn, also known as Frances Hook. He stated that she served in “some Ohio unit,” which was a mistake likely due to the fact that Jones remembered the details incorrectly when he wrote the manuscript years after the war. 26. Illinois State Archives, Illinois Civil War Muster and Descriptive Rolls Database, entries for Jerry Kane and Jeremiah Kane, http://www.ilsos.gov/isaveterans/civilmustersrch. jsp; Swan, Chicago’s Irish Legion, 14; RG 94, AGO document file record card 1502399, National Archives; “Romance and Female Gallantry,” Pittsburgh Daily Commercial, March 19, 1864; “About Soldiering,” Bloomington Weekly Pantagraph, April 20, 1864. 27. Wittenmyer, Under the Guns, 17–20. 28. Ohio, County Marriages, 1789–2013, Gallia County. Mathew Angel and Frances E. Steward, August 12, 1866, FamilySearch.org; Ohio, County Births, 1841–2003, Gallia County, birth records for Mary Laura Angel and Maggie Angel, FamilySearch.org; Rodney O. Davis, “Private Albert Cashier as Regarded by His/Her Comrades,” Illinois Historical Journal 82, no. 2 (Summer 1989): 111; US, Burial Registers, Military Posts and National Cemeteries, 1862–1960, entry for Jeremiah Kane, Ancestry.com 29. Swan, Chicago’s Irish Legion, 23–24; “A Female Soldier,” Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, March 3, 1864. 30. Mary Ann Clark to Mrs. Huffman and Mrs. Tucker, undated letter, Kentucky Historical Society, Mary Ann Clark letters, SC 1012, available online at http://www.kyhistory .com/cdm/compoundobject/collection/MS/id/63/rec/1 31. E. A. W Burbage to Mrs. Kate Huffman, December 27, 1862, Kentucky Historical Society, Mary Ann Clark letters, SC 1012; “A Camp Romance—Female Soldier,” Philadelphia Inquirer, February 12, 1862; “A Confederate Romance—History of Mrs. Anna Clarke,” Cairo City Weekly News, December 25, 1862, Vicki Betts, “Women Soldiers, Spies, and Vivandières: Articles from Civil War Newspapers” (2016), Special Topics, paper 28; John Q. Wilds to his wife, December 13, 1862, as quoted in Blanton and Cook, They Fought Like Demons, 151. 32. Nashville Daily Union, December 4, 1862. The Natchez Daily Courier, January 7, 1863, also reported a connection with Perryville. The 5th Tennessee Infantry, which became the 35th Tennessee, was at both Richmond and Perryville. Furthermore, Clark also mentioned that she was with Bragg’s command. The 5th Tennessee was with him at Perryville. There was a James Anderson on the roster of the 5th Tennessee. He was captured at Richmond. However, according to his service records found at Fold3.com, the timeframe of his service does not match that of Clark’s. “A Rebel Female Guerrilla,” Boston Herald, December 27, 1862. 33. E. A. W. Burbage to Mrs. Kate Huffman, December 27, 1862. Kentucky Historical Society, Mary Ann Clark letters, SC 1012; US 1860 Census, Breckinridge County, Kentucky,

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J. C. Burbridge household, Familysearch.org; “Female Soldier,” Skaneateles Democrat, February 26, 1863; “A Day in Vicksburg,” Natchez Daily Courier, January 7, 1863. 34. Mary Ann Clark to Mrs. Huffman and Mrs. Tucker, undated letter, Kentucky Historical Society, Mary Ann Clark letters, SC 1012; Nashville Daily Union, December 4, 1862; “A Confederate Romance—History of Mrs. Anna Clarke,” Cairo City Weekly News, December 25, 1862, Vicki Betts, “Women Soldiers, Spies, and Vivandières: Articles from Civil War Newspapers” (2016), Special Topics, paper 28. 35. Barbara Brooks Tomblin, The Civil War on the Mississippi: Union Sailors, Gunboat Captains, and the Campaign to Control the River (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2016), 187. 36. “A Day in Vicksburg,” Natchez Daily Courier, January 7, 1863, carrying a story from the Tensas Gazette; “A Rebel Female Guerrilla,” Boston Herald, December 27, 1862. 37. Maury Darst, “Robert Hodges, Jr.: Confederate Soldier,” East Texas Historical Journal 9, issue 1, article 6 (1971): 37, available at http://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/ethj/vol9/iss1/6; William C. Davis, Inventing Loreta Velazquez: Confederate Soldier Impersonator, Media Celebrity, and Con Artist (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2016), 51, Nook edition; Dieter C. Ullrich, ed. “Civil War Diaries of Van Buren Oldham,” MS 009, Special Collections/University Archives Dept., Paul Meek Library, University of Tennessee at Martin, available online at https://www.utm.edu/departments/special_collections/ E579.5%20Oldham/text/vboldham_indx.php, entry for August 5, 1864. 38. Bromfield Lewis Ridley, Battles and Sketches of the Army of Tennessee (Mexico, Missouri: Missouri Printing & Publishing Co., 1906), 495. 39. Mary Ann Clark to Mrs. Huffman and Mrs. Tucker, undated letter, Kentucky Historical Society, Mary Ann Clark letters, SC 1012; Will Records, 1800–1965, Breckinridge County, Kentucky, Ancestry.com; her name appears as Mary A. Nelson in her mother’s will. CHAPTER 7

1. US 1860 Census, Somonauk Township, DeKalb County, Illinois, Henry Hart household, Ancesstry.com; General Orders No. 8, December 18, 1862, Official Records, series 1, vol. 17, part 1, 619; Almeda Butler Hart to her mother, Alsameda Sumner Butler, undated letter, Vicksburg National Military Park, The Vicksburg Campaign Series, box 4, folder 103. 2. “A Singular Affair,” Daily Cleveland Herald, June 12, 1866. The article lists the unit as the 6th Missouri Volunteers, which was a mistake because there was no Charles Junghaus in that unit. The company was right, but the unit was wrong. It should be Company E, 3rd Missouri Infantry. RG 94, M405. Compiled Service Records of Volunteer Union Soldiers who Served in Organizations from the State of Missouri, Charles Junghaus, accessed from Fold3. 3. Edward P. Reichhelm journal, Library of Congress, MSS4993, transcript, 1–3. 4. Almeda Butler Hart to her mother, Alsameda Sumner Butler, undated letter, Vicksburg National Military Park, The Vicksburg Campaign Series, box 4, folder 103. 5. Bishop, Mississippi’s Civil War Battlefields, 121; Edward P. Reichhelm journal transcript, 4. 6. Official Records, series 1, vol. 17, part 1, 636; John C. Rives, The Congressional Globe: Containing the Debates and Proceedings of the Third Session of the Thirty-Seventh Congress:

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Also, of the Special Session of the Senate (Washington, DC: Congressional Globe Office, 1863), 1255; “The Vicksburg Disaster,” New York Daily Herald, January 15, 1863. Michael B. Ballard, The Civil War in Mississippi: Major Campaigns and Battles ( Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2011), 274. 7. William G. Bek, trans., “The Civil War Diary of John T. Buegel, Union Soldier, Part I,” Missouri Historical Review 40, no. 3 (April 1946): 329. 8. Edward P. Reichhelm journal transcript, 13, 21; Earl J. Hess, ed., A German in the Yankee Fatherland: The Civil War Letters of Henry A. Kircher (Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 1983), 47–48. 9. Edward P. Reichhelm journal transcript, 22. 10. US Registers of Deaths of Volunteers, 1861–1865, entry for Henry W. Hart, Ancestry. com; Illinois State Archives Civil War Muster and Descriptive Rolls Database, entry for Henry W. Hart, http://www.ilsos.gov/isaveterans/civilMusterSearch.do?key=109014; Burial Registers, Military Posts and National Cemeteries, 1862–1960, entry for Henry Hart, Ancestry.com; US National Cemetery Interment Control Forms, 1928–1962, entry for Henry Hart, Ancestry.com; Jo Gruenwald to the author April 13, 2016; Family members do not know at this time who Almeda’s second husband was but believe his last name was McAffee. 11. US 1860 Census, 8th ward, Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, David Steward household, Ancestry.com. 12. Almeda Butler Hart to her mother, Alsameda Sumner Butler, undated letter, Vicksburg National Military Park, The Vicksburg Campaign Series, Box 4, Folder 103; Official Records, series 1, vol. 17, part 1, 613. CHAPTER 8

1. Ballard, Civil War Mississippi, 54. 2. Pvt. William A. McGee to Fanny McGee, March 31, 1863, The Fugelman 13 no. 3 ( July 2003): 11, found at: http://secondwi.com/newsletter/july%202003.pdf. 3. Edwin C. Bearss, ed., “The Civil War Diary of Sgt. Levi L. Hoag,” The Annals of Iowa 39, no. 3 (Winter 1968): 179. 4. Bearss, “Diary of Sgt. Levi L. Hoag,” 178. 5. Harvey H. Kimball, “The History of the 24th Iowa Infantry,” 214–18 quoted by Jeffery Goodlove, “This Day in Goodlove History, December 17,” This Day in Goodlove History (blog), December 16, 2012, http://thisdayingoodlovehistory.blogspot.com/2012/12/this -day-in-goodlove-history-december-17.html; Bearss, ed., “Diary of Sgt. Levi L. Hoag,” 173–74. 6. Bearss, ed., “Diary of Sgt. Levi L. Hoag,” 179. 7. Guy E. Logan, Adjutant General, Roster and Record of Iowa Soldiers in the War of the Rebellion, Vol. III (Des Moines, IA: Emory H. English, 1910), 780–81; Official Records, series 1, vol. 24, part 1, 611, 668–69. 8. Ludlow, Battle of Allatoona, 36–37. Ludlow only mentioned that she was part of the Missouri Brigade; Official Records, series 1, vol. 24, part 1, 668, 670–71; Ballard, Civil War Mississippi, 57–58.

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9. Terrence J. Winschel, Triumph and Defeat: The Vicksburg Campaign, Volume 2 (New York: Sans Beatie, 2006), 25. 10. Ballard, Civil War Mississippi, 62–63; Bishop, Mississippi’s Civil War Battlefields, 182. 11. Timothy B. Smith, Champion Hill: Decisive Battle for Vicksburg (New York City: Savas Beatie, LLC., 2004), 96–107; Hess, ed., A German in the Yankee Fatherland, 105; William G. Bek, trans., “The Civil War Diary of John T. Buegel, Union Soldier, Part II,” Missouri Historical Review 40, no. 4 ( July 1946): 509; Jim Woodrick, The Civil War Siege of Jackson, Mississippi (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2016), 105. 12. Smith, Champion Hill, 104–7. 13. Smith, Champion Hill, 104–7, 201–2, 206–7, 209, 248–49; Anderson, Memoirs, 312; Official Records, series 1, vol. 24, part 2, 111; Anderson, Memoirs, 313. 14. Logan, Roster and Record of Iowa Soldiers, 784–86; Official Records, series 1, vol. 24, part 2, 8. 15. Official Records, series 1, vol. 24, part 2, 44, 56. 16. Official Records, series 1, vol. 24, part 2, 113. 17. Official Records, series 1, vol. 24, part 2, 138; Henry Clinton Parkhurst Collection, MS 16, Box 3, Civil War History Scrapbook, 1870, vol. II, p. 404–5, State Historical Society of Iowa; Henry Clinton Parkhurst, Songs of a Man Who Failed: The Poetical Writings of Henry Clinton Parkhurst (Lincoln, Nebraska: The Woodruff Press, 1921), 221. 18. Richard Wheeler, The Siege of Vicksburg (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1978), 158–59. CHAPTER 9

1. Anderson, Memoirs, 331. 2. Official Records, series 1, vol. 24, part 2, 250–52; Bek, trans., “The Civil War Diary of John T. Buegel, part II,” 509–10. 3. Brooks D. Simpson and John V. Berlin, eds. Sherman’s Civil War: Selected Correspondence of William T. Sherman, 1860–1865 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 472; Hess, ed., A German in the Yankee Fatherland, 52, 101. 4. Wales W. Wood, A History of the Ninety-Fifth Regiment: Illinois Infantry Volunteers (Chicago: Tribune Company’s Book and Job Printing Office, 1865), 74–79. 5. Davis, “Private Albert Cashier,” 112; “Enlisted at Belvidere and Fought in the Civil War as a Man for Three Years,” True Republican, May 24, 1913; “Cashier Tells Correct Name,” Belvidere Daily Republican, May 21, 1913; “Admits He’s a She,” Leavenworth Post, May 21, 1913, RG 15, Veterans Administration, pension application file C 2,573,248, National Archives. 6. RG 15, Veterans Administration, pension application file C 2,573,248, National Archives; Laura Leedy Gansler, The Mysterious Private Thompson: The Double Life of Sarah Emma Edmonds, Civil War Soldier (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), 30. 7. “Love and War,” Weekly Gazette and Free Press, May 24, 1861; RG 94, Compiled Service Records, Robert Wilson, 3rd Ohio Infantry (3 months), National Archives. 8. RG 153, Judge Advocate General Court-Martial Case Files, NN-3925, court martial for Captain William H. Boyd, 1st New York Cavalry, National Archives.

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9. “A Female ‘Vet,’” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 20, 1880; “Woman Alive Who Marched with Sherman,” Wichita Daily Eagle, February 6, 1918. A challenging search of census reports for “Brigedgettette” yielded no results, rendering it entirely possible that it was a horrible misspelling in the newspaper article or a creative alias. A search for more common variations of the name also failed to produce definitive details. Though the writer of the article indicated that Davis was discovered and ultimately marched with Sherman to the sea as a nurse, the 68th Illinois was not in his command. This unit was a three-month unit and served provost duty from June until September 1862 in the vicinity of Alexandria, Virginia before mustering out. Therefore, either the unit was reported incorrectly, or Davis was a fraud. 10. “A Female Soldier,” Pittsburgh Gazette, February 15, 1864. 11. Thomas Hannah to his wife, November 17, 1862, Wikimedia Commons, https://com mons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thomas_Hannah_letter,_1862–11–17,_Jackson,_TN.pdf; “Cashier Talks Freely With Lieutenant Ives,” Belvidere Daily Republican, May 29, 1913; Davis, “Private Albert Cashier,” 110, 112. 12. Blanton and Cook, They Fought Like Demons, 46–47. 13. RG 153, Judge Advocate General Court-Martial Case Files, NN-3925, court martial for Captain William H. Boyd, 1st New York Cavalry, National Archives. 14. “The Woman Soldier,” Ripley Bee, August 8, 1861; Benjamin F. Marsh to his mother, September 10, 1862, Marsh Family Papers, c.00047, Michigan State University Archives and Historical Collections, available online at http://civilwar.archives.msu.edu/ collection/71C-9/marsh_fam/; Blanton and Cook, They Fought Like Demons, 47. 15. RG 15, Veterans Administration, pension application file C 2,573,248, National Archives. 16. Davis, “Private Albert Cashier,” 111; RG 15, Veterans Administration, pension application file C 2,573,248, National Archives. CHAPTER 10

1. Illinois-Vicksburg Military Park Commission, Illinois at Vicksburg (Chicago: IllinoisVicksburg Park Commission, 1907), 391–92. 2. John S. Kountz, Vicksburg National Military Park Commission, Record of the Organizations Engaged in the Campaign, Siege, and Defense of Vicksburg (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1901), 15. 3. Harrisburg Telegraph, October 17, 1866. 4. RG 94, “Edmondson File,” National Archives. 5. Kountz, Record of Organizations, 27–28; Swan, Chicago’s Irish Legion, 24; James B. Swan to author, August 30, 2016. 6. Wittenmyer, Under the Guns, 18–19 ; “Francis Miller, Female Soldier,” Memphis Bulletin on April 1, 1863; “About Soldiering,” Bloomington Weekly Pantagraph, April 20, 1864; “Sketch of the Army Life of James Madison Jones,” manuscript, SC0890, Indiana Historical Society, 89; Illinois State Archives, Illinois Civil War Muster and Descriptive Rolls Database, entries for Jerry Kane, http://www.ilsos.gov/isaveterans/civilmustersrch.jsp; RG 94, Hospital Registers, Tennessee no. 363, p. 290, list of wounded, 90th Illinois Infantry and Tennessee

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no. 412, register of sick and wounded at hospital no. 2, Chattanooga, February 1864, list her unit as Co. G, 90th Illinois Infantry; Jones incorrectly noted that her regiment was from Ohio and may have made mistakes with other details as well. 7. “Mrs. Matthew Angel,” National Tribune, March 8, 1909; “Romance of Frances Quinn,” Cincinnati Enquirer, May 23, 1909; only the post-war accounts such as these correctly report her last name as Quinn ; RG 94, Compiled Service Records, B. F. Miller, 15th Indiana Infantry, National Archives RG 94, AGO document file record card 1502399, National Archives. 8. “A Female Soldier,” Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, March 3, 1864; “Story of a Female Fighter,” New York Times, April 21, 1864; Vermont Watchman and State Journal, May 27, 1864; RG 94, Hospital Registers, Tennessee no. 363, p. 290, list of wounded, 90th Illinois Infantry and Tennessee no. 412, register of sick and wounded at hospital no. 2, Chattanooga, February, 1864, list her unit as Co. G, 90th Illinois Infantry; “A Sojourn in Dixie,” National Tribune, August 29, 1895. 9. “Story of a Female Fighter,” New York Times, April 21, 1864. 10. Bearss, ed., “Diary of Sgt. Levi L. Hoag,” 186, 187, 191; Anderson, Memoirs, 338, 358. 11. Anderson, Memoirs, 339, 347 12. Anderson, Memoirs, 352. 13. Anderson, Memoirs, 336–37, 359, 364. 14. Shelby Harriel. “The Real Ellen Levasay,” Forbidden, Hidden, and Forgotten: Women Soldiers of the Civil War (blog), October, 27, 2014, https://forbiddenhiddenforgotten .blogspot.com/2014/10/the-real-ellen-levasay.html; Sammy Lievsay, e-mail message to author, October 12, 2016. 15. Robert S. Bevier, History of the First and Second Missouri Confederate Brigades (St. Louis: Bryan, Brand, & Company, 1879), 226. 16. Anderson, Memoirs, 392; Brad Butkovich, The Battle of Allatoona Pass: Civil War Skirmish in Bartow County, Georgia (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2014), 96–98. 17. Butkovich, Allatoona Pass, 99, 102; unsent letter by unknown author of the 93rd Illinois Infantry and addressed to friend Matt Landon, Co. H, 93rd Illinois Infantry, letter in private collection and transcribed by Shane Christen. 18. William Salter, “Major-General John M. Corse,” Annals of Iowa 2, no. 4 ( January 1896): 292; Ludlow, The Battle of Allatoona, 31; Official Records, series 1, vol. 39, part I, 762. 19. Ludlow, The Battle of Allatoona, 36–37. 20. “The Battle of Allatoona,” Pittsburgh Daily Commercial, October 26, 1864; “The Battle of Allatoona—Thrilling Description,” New York Sun, October 27, 1864; both cite an article from the Cincinnati Commercial; Private Henry R. Pippitt diaries, 104th Ohio Infantry, diary entry for October 9, 1864, Digital Civil War Collection, University of Tennessee, available online at http://dlc.lib.utk.edu/pippitt/pippitt.html; Private Wendell D. Wiltsie diaries, 23rd Michigan Infantry, diary entry for October 9, 1864, MSC0078, University of Iowa, available online at http://128.255.22.135/cdm/ref/collection/cwd/id/1352. 21. Sam Morse journal, 4th MN, October 7, 1864, journal in private collection and transcribed by Shane Christen; John Ashton diary, 118th OH, entry for October 9, 1864, Allen County (Ohio) Museum and Historical Society; Unsent letter by unknown author of the

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93rd Illinois Infantry and addressed to friend Matt Landon, Co. H, 93rd Illinois Infantry, letter in private collection and transcribed by Shane Christen. 22. Steven H. Newton, Lost for the Cause: The Confederate Army in 1864 (Boston, MA: Da Capo Press, 2000), 296–97; Dan Bokros, The Battle of Raymond: The Untold Turning Point of the Civil War (Lulu.com, 2008), 17. 23. Earl J. Hess, ed., A German in the Yankee Fatherland, 111; Robert W. Hodge, ed., The Civil War Letters of Perry Mayo (Lansing, MI: Stone Printing Company, 1967), 233. 24. RG 15, Veterans Administration, pension application file C 2,573,248, National Archives. CHAPTER 11

1. Lucius W. Barber, Army Memoirs of Lucius W. Barber, Company “D,” 15th Illinois Volunteer Infantry (Chicago, IL: The J. M. W. Jones Stationery and Printing Co., 1894), 126. 2. Woodrick, The Siege of Jackson, 58–59. 3. Harrisburg Telegraph, October 17, 1866; “Romantic,” Poughkeepsie Eagle News, June 21, 1864. 4. “About Soldiering,” Bloomington Weekly Pantagraph, April 20, 1864; Swan, Chicago’s Irish Legion, 77; Woodrick, Siege of Jackson, 85–88. 5. Bek, trans, “Civil War Diary of John T. Buegel, Part II,” 511. 6. Woodrick, Siege of Jackson, 98, 100. 7. Dr. Richard A. Sauers, ed. The Civil War Journal of Colonel William J. Bolton, 51st Pennsylvania (Boston, MA: Da Capo Press, 2000), 129; Woodrick, Siege of Jackson, 98. 8. Official Records, series 1, vol. 24, part 2, 619; Illinois at Vicksburg, 391; Jim Woodrick, “The Siege of Jackson,” And Speaking of Which (blog), July 17, 2013, http://andspeakingofwhich .blogspot.com/2013/07/the-siege-of-jackson.html. 9. “About Soldiering,” Bloomington Weekly Pantagraph, April 20, 1864; “Romance and Female Gallantry,” Pittsburg Daily Commercial, March 19, 1864; “A Sojourn in Dixie,” National Tribune, August 29, 1895; Wittenmyer, Under the Guns, 17–20; RG 94, AGO record cards, file 1502399, National Archives. 10. RG 109, Confederate Records, Letter Sent, Atlanta, July 1863–May 1864, chapter 2, vol. 186, p. 116, National Archives referenced in RG 94, AGO document file record card 1502399, National Archives. 11. RG 94, Hospital Registers, Tennessee no. 363-list of wounded, 90th Illinois Infantry, p. 290, Tennessee no. 412-register of sick and wounded at hospital no. 2, Chattanooga, February, 1864, National Archives. 12. Wittenmyer, Under the Guns, 19; James B. Swan email to author October 11, 2016. 13. Wittenmyer, Under the Guns, 17–20; “Woman Was Soldier in Union Army,” Gallipolis Bulletin, May 26, 1916; Official Roster of the Soldiers of the State of Ohio in the War of the Rebellion, 1861–1866, Vol. X (Cincinnati, OH: The Ohio Valley Company, 1889), 332. 14. Ohio, County Marriages, 1789–2013, Gallia County, Mathew Angel and Frances E. Steward, August 12, 1866, FamilySearch.org; Ohio, County Births, 1841–2003, Gallia County,

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FamilySearch.org ; Undated article from the Gallipolis Daily Tribune found at http://www .geni.com/people/Frances-Elizabeth-Hook-Stewart/6000000000110995702 15. “A Degenerate Female Soldier,” Emporia News, May 13, 1870. 16. The 3rd Missouri had been with Wangelin’s brigade but was assigned to Woods’s brigade for the charge and remained with him throughout the occupation of Resaca. See Official Records, vol. 38, part 3, 164. For Woods’s report, see Official Records, series 1, vol. 38, part 3, 142; Bek, trans., “Civil War Diary of John T. Buegel, Part II,” 518. 17. RG 94, M405, Compiled Service Records of Volunteer Union Soldiers who Served in Organizations from the State of Missouri, National Archives, accessed from Fold3; RG 94, Carded Medical Record for Charles Junghaus, 3rd Missouri Infantry, National Archives. The name also appears in records as Junghans; “A Singular Affair,” Daily Cleveland Herald, June 12, 1866. The article erroneously reports her unit as the 6th Missouri Infantry. Service records confirm Junghaus’s unit as the 3rd Missouri Infantry and not the 6th. 18. US National Cemetery Interment Control Forms, 1928–1962, Ancestry.com; Initial genealogical research has uncovered a man named Herman Junghaus in the same company as Charles Junghaus, Company E. A search of census reports and pension records found Herman living in Washington County, Illinois, in 1860 as a farmhand in the Gorman household. Further searches of the 1860 Washington County census reports uncovered an individual listed as “C. Younghaunts” as a male farmhand in the Churcher household. This person was absent in subsequent census reports, which indicates that this may be the Charles Junghaus who was killed at Resaca. Though the gender listed was male, it could be that Pvt. Junghaus lived disguised as a man before the war. As Albert Cashier, Jennie Hodgers worked as a farmhand in Belvidere, Illinois, before she enlisted in the 95th Illinois Infantry. Likewise with Marian McKenzie, alias “Henry Fitzallen,” who told reporters that she hired herself out as a farmhand to a wealthy German farmer in Newport, Kentucky, before the war in order to help prepare herself for the hardships she would endure living a soldier’s life (Indianapolis Daily Journal, April 11, 1862). Such may be the case with “Charles Junghaus.” Research has yet to reveal how Charles and Herman were related, if at all. 19. Quartermaster General’s Office, Roll of Honor, No. XI: Names of Soldiers Who Died in the Defense of the American Union, Interred in the National Cemeteries (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1866), 5; Report of the Proceedings of the Society of the Army of the Tennessee, Volumes 17–20 (Cincinnati, OH: Society of the Army of the Tennessee, 1893), 113. 20. “A Female Soldier,” Wyoming (Iowa) Journal, March 24, 1871. CHAPTER 12

1. Wood, History of the Ninety-Fifth Illinois, 108–9, 110–16; Bishop, Mississippi’s Battlefields, 300, 305, 321. 2. Hall, Women on the Civil War Battlefront, 68; Blanton and Cook, They Fought Like Demons, 102–3. 3. Blanton and Cook, They Fought Like Demons, 170, 176. 4. Blanton and Cook, They Fought Like Demons, 170–71; Hall, Women on the Civil War Battlefront, 69.

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5. Albert D. J. Cashier case file 9454, Illinois Veterans’ Home, Quincy Illinois; Gerhard P. Clausius, “The Little Soldier of the 95th: Albert D. J. Cashier,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 51, no. 4 (Winter 1958): 386; Davis, “Private Albert Cashier,” 112. 6. Clausius, “The Little Soldier of the 95th,” 387. 7. RG 15, Veterans Administration, pension application file C 2,573,248, National Archives; American Psychological Association, “Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming People,” American Psychologist 70, no. 9 (December 2015): 861. 8. “Recorder Woolfley’s Court,” New Orleans Times Picayune, February 10, 1865; “Facts and Fancies,” Daily Milwaukee News, August 25, 1865; Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, April 12, 1865; “At Large Again,” Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, October 28, 1865. 9. Kathleen Cooper, “Wearing the Pants: A Brief Western History of Pants,” The Toast, August 7, 2014, http://the-toast.net/2014/08/07/wearing-pants-brief-history/; “Arresting Dress,” PBS NewsHour; “Cross-sex Dress Ban Overruled,” Chicago Tribune, September 21, 1973. 10. “A Strange Story,” New Orleans Times Picayune, March 6, 1864. 11. Travis, The Story of the Twenty-Fifth Michigan, 321–22; “Another Female Soldier,” SemiWeekly Wisconsin, January 2, 1864. 12. Union Provost Marshals’s File of Papers Relating to Individual Civilians, 1861–1867, Ancestry.com. 13. Blanton and Cook, They Fought Like Demons, 54, 200–201, 260–61, n22. 14. John Scott, Story of the Thirty-Second Iowa Infantry Volunteers (Nevada, IA: John Scott, 1896), 296. CONCLUSION

1. “A Female Soldier,” Wyoming (Iowa) Journal, March 24, 1871; Blanton and Cook, They Fought Like Demons, 176. ADDENDUM

1. “Female Soldier,” Gallipolis Journal, October 29, 1863; Lafayette (Indiana) Weekly Journal, October 23, 1863; Indiana Civil War Soldiers Database Index, Indiana Digital Archives, http://www.in.gov/digitalarchives; Edmund L. Shirley married Abigail Trumbo in 1870 according to an entry in Abigail’s Bible. Brian Cogburn email to author, May 4, 2017. 2. Frederick Dyer. A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion, Part III (Des Moines, IA: The Dyer Publishing Company, 1908), 1284; Thomas H. Richey, The Battle of Baton Rouge (College Station, TX: VirtualBookWorm.com Publishing, 2005), 68. 3. Two Vermont units served on Ship Island: the 7th Infantry from April 7 to May 13, 1862, and the 8th Infantry from April 6 to May 7, 1862. Theresa Arnold-Scriber and Terry G. Scriber, Ship Island, Mississippi: Rosters and History of the Civil War Prison ( Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., Inc., 2008), 33; Dyer, Compendium, 1652; “Notes from Captain Tobin’s Knapsack,” Cincinnati Enquirer, December 1, 1847; Blanton and Cook, They Fought

188

notes

Like Demons, 103–6; Shelby Harriel, “Fool Me Once . . . ,” Forbidden, Hidden, and Forgotten: Women Soldiers of the Civil War (blog), April 1, 2016, https://forbiddenhiddenforgotten .blogspot.com/2016/03/fool-me-once.html. 4. “Woman Asks for Pension,” Raleigh Times, May 20, 1911; US 1860 Census, Union County, Illinois, Jno Silver household; divorce records from the Union County Illinois Circuit Court, John Silber vs. Elizabeth Silber; “Woman Asks for Pension,” The Raleigh Times, May 20, 1911; US 1880 Census, Shoshone and Bannock Indian Agency, Sweetwater, Wyoming, Leander C. Bliss household, FamilySearch.org; RG 15, Veterans Administration, pension application 1396466, Louise Bliss, National Archives; Idaho Death Certificates, 1911–1937, Louise E. Bliss, FamilySearch.org. 5. “Adventures of a Long Island Girl,” Providence Evening Press, August 15, 1864; “The Williamsburgh Girl Goes for a Soldier,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 12, 1864; Allentown Leader, February 22, 1901; Daily True Delta, February 21, 1864; RG 153, Judge Advocate General (Army) Court-Martial Case File LL 2547, Pvt. H. C. Steele, National Archives; US, Registers of Deaths of Volunteers, 1861–1865, entry for Fanny Wilson, Illinois, Ancestry. com; US National Cemetery Interment Control Forms, 1928–1962, entry for F. Wilson, Ancestry.com. 6. Hall, Women on the Civil War Battlefront, 272; “The Female Lieutenant,” Staunton Spectator, September 22, 1863; Savannah Republican, September 25, 1863. For more information about the questions surrounding Velazquez and her adventures, see William C. Davis, Inventing Loreta Velazquez: Confederate Soldier Impersonator, Media Celebrity, and Con Artist. His thorough study raises doubts about her account. However, her claims cannot be conclusively debunked because much of his research is based off his own suppositions and contains flaws. For a detailed, critical review of his book, see Shelby Harriel, “Review of ‘Inventing Loreta Velazquez’ by William C. Davis,” Forbidden, Hidden, and Forgotten: Women Soldiers of the Civil War (blog), December 11, 2016, https://forbiddenhiddenforgot ten.blogspot.com/2016/12/review-of-inventing-loreta-velazquez-by.html. 7. “An Iowa War Romance,” Inter Ocean, December 23, 1880; “A Woman as a Soldier,” Inter Ocean, January 7, 1881; Davenport Weekly Gazette, January 7, 1881; Fort Wayne Sentinel, January 29, 1881; Second Reunion of the Twelfth Iowa V.V. Infantry (Dubuque, IA: C.B. Dorr Press, 1884), 31.

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