At Home and in the Field
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Call for Proposals Conference on Women and the Civil War 2014
The Society for Women and the Civil War is seeking proposals for presentations for its 2014 Conference on Women and the Civil War. The Conference will be held in Nashville, TN, July 25 – 27, 2014. As part of our Sesquicentennial Remembrance of the women of the Civil War era, our 2014 Conference will highlight the women of 1864 especially those associated with having the war brought to their homes with the theme “War at Her Doorstep.” We invite proposals examining all the women of the homefront and in the field, of the North or the South.
The Society for Women and the Civil War is dedicated to recognizing the lives and efforts of women from 1861-1865, both Union and Confederate, showcasing original and innovative research in its conferences.
Potential presenters should submit:
1. A synopsis of the presentation, not more than 3 pages. The synopsis must include a description of visual aids used to illustrate and highlight the presentation.
2. A bibliography of the sources used, with an emphasis on the primary sources.
3. A personal vitae or biography, not more than 1 page, including contact information.
Submissions will be evaluated principally on the following criteria:
1. Originality of the topic.
2. Relevance of the topic to the lives and efforts of women in the Civil War era.
3. Quality of research, highlighting the use of primary sources.
4. Quality of the presentation, including use of visual aids.
5. Anticipated interest-level in the topic.
We encourage submissions from graduate students and are particularly interested in student subjects examined from a micro-history perspective. Only presentations based on original research will be considered for selection.
Send your submission, and any questions or inquiries to: Meg Galante-DeAngelis at athomeandinthefield@ or Mary.Galante-DeAngelis@uconn.edu
Deadline: All submissions must be RECEIVED by November 30, 2013. The Society will contact all submitters in January 2014. Presentation submission indicates acceptance to speak if selected by the Conference Committee.
DALLAS HERALD, December 26, 1860, p. 4, c. 1
Cakes for the Holidays.
A lady correspondent of the American Agriculturist gives the following receipts for making good cake for the holidays:
Welcome Cake.—Stir a cup and a half of sugar and half a cup of butter together, with three well beaten eggs. Sift a teaspoonful of cream of tartar, and half a teaspoonful of soda with three small cups of flour; this, with half a cup of milk, must be mixed with the above, and baked in a moderately quick oven. By adding raisins and currents, ½ lb. of each, a very good fruit cake may be made.
New Year's Cake.—1 cup of butter, 1 of sugar, 1 teaspoonful of cream of tartar, ½ teaspoonful of soda, and caraway seeds to the taste. Flour must be added till the dough is fit to roll—these require a quick oven.
Spice Cake.—1 cup of sugar, 2 of molasses, ½ cup butter, a teaspoonful of spice, and one of soda dissolved in a little milk; add flour till it is quite stiff; then roll thin and cut in cakes. Bake quick.
Wealthy Cake.—Take ½ pound of butter, ¾ pound of sugar, the same of flour, 4 eggs, 2 lb. of seeded raisins, 1 pound of currants, ¼ pound of citron, 1 gill of brandy. Spice well with nutmeg and ground cloves. Bake slowly three hours. This cake will keep six months. Icing for the cake: beat the white of two eggs to a froth, then stir in half a pound of powdered sugar. Flavor with a little essence of lemon, and spread on with a knife when the cake is cold.
DAILY CHRONICLE & SENTINEL [AUGUSTA, GA],
January 19, 1860, p. 1, c. 2
Cranberry Pudding.--Boil one pint and a half of cranberries cleared of the stalks in four ounces of sugar and water, until they are broken and form a kind of jam; make up a large ball of; cover it well with rice washed clean and dry; then round each fold a floured piece of cloth, which tie as for dumplings. Boil them one hour; sift sugar over when served, and butter in a boat.
BELLVILLE [TX] COUNTRYMAN, February 20, 1861, p. 4, c. 1
Golden Pie.—Take one lemon; grate the peel, and squeeze the pulp and juice in a bowl—be sure to remove every seed—to which add one teacup of new milk, one tablespoonful of powdered starch, and the yolks of three eggs, well beaten; pour this mixture into a nice paste crust, and bake slowly. Beat the whites of three eggs to a stiff froth, and when the pie is just done pour it over the top evenly, and return to the oven, just to stiffen, not brown.
BELLVILLE [TX] COUNTRYMAN, June 5, 1861, p. 4, c. 2
Water muffins.—Sift one quart of flour; add one teaspoonful of salt; make a batter with tepid water, putting first into the flour two teaspoonful of cream tartar; when just ready to bake, add one teaspoonful of car soda [sic?], dissolved. Bake on a griddle, in rings.
COLUMBUS [GA] ENQUIRER, April 15, 1862, p. 2, c. 3
Rice Cakes.—As rice is the cheapest kind of food we have, as well as the most nutricious [sic], the following from a correspondent of the Field Notes, will be read by every good house-keeper with interest.
While visiting the West India Islands, I became very fond of rice, cooked after this fashion: they boil the rice in the usual manner and let it cool, then add a little water or milk to it, making it about the consistency of common buckwheat cakes. Add to this a little salt and a handful of flour, and bake on a griddle as you would batter cakes and buckwheat. An egg will help some by making them bake quicker. Try it, housekeepers; I think you will find it an excellent dish. Any dyspeptic can eat these rice cakes.
SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY [ATLANTA, GA], September 17, 1862, p. 2, c. 2
Receipts for Making Bread, &c., from Rice Flour.
Russell County, Ala., Sept. 8.
Eds. Sun: I read an article in one of your papers lately in which receipts for making different kinds of bread with rice flour, were inquired for and having a few that I think will be found good, I send them to you. They were printed in Charleston, S. C., several years ago. Respectfully, Elizabeth B. Lewis.
To Make Loaf Rice Bread.--Boil a pint of rice soft, and a pint of leaven, then three quarts of rice flour, put it to raise in a tin or earthen vessel, until it has risen sufficiently; divide it into three parts and bake it as other bread, and you will have three large loaves. Or scald the flour, and when cold, mix half wheat flour or corn meal, raised with leaven in the usual way.
Another.--One quart of rice flour: make it into a stiff pap, by wetting with warm water, not so hot as to make it lumpy, when well wet add boiling water, as much as two or three quarts, stir continually until it boils; put in 1/2 pint of yeast when it cools, and a little salt, knead as much wheat flour as will make it a proper dough for bread, put it to rise, and when it has risen add a little more wheat flour; let it stand in a warm place half an hour, and bake it. This same mixture only made thinner and baked in rings make excellent muffins.
Journey or Jonny Cake.--To three spoonfuls of soft boiled rice, add a small tea-cup of water or milk, then add six spoonfuls of rice flour, which will make a large Jonny cake, or six waffles.
Rice Cakes.--Take a pint of soft boiled rice, a half pint of milk or water, to which add twelve spoonfuls of the rice flour; divide it into small cakes and bake them in a brick oven.
Rice Cakes Like Buckwheat.--Mix one-fourth wheat flour to three-fourths superfine rice flour, and raise it as buckwheat flour, bake it like buckwheat cakes.
To Make Wafers.--Take a pint of warm water, a teaspoonful of salt, add a pint of the flour, and it will give you two dozen wafers.
To Make Rice Puffs.--To a pint of the flour add a teaspoonful of salt, a pint of boiling water, beat up four eggs, stir them well together, put from two to three spoonfuls of lard in a pan, make it boiling hot, and fry as you do common fritters.
To Make a Rice Pudding.--Take a quart of milk, add a pint of the flour, boil them to a pap, beat up six eggs, to which add six spoonfuls of Havana sugar, and a spoonful of butter, which when well beaten together, add to the milk and flour, grease the pan it is to be baked in, grate nutmeg over the mixture and bake it.
Rice Flour Sponge Cake.--Made like sponge cake except that you use 3/4 of a pound of rice flour, thirteen eggs, leaving out four whites, and add a little salt.
Rice Flour Blance [sic] Mange.--Boil one quart of milk, season it to your taste with sugar and rose water, take four tablespoonfuls of the rice flour, mix it very smooth with cold milk, add this to the other milk while it is boiling, stirring it well; let all boil together about fifteen minutes, stirring occasionally; then pour it into moulds and put it by to cool. This is a very favorite article for invalids.
Rice Griddle Cakes.--Boil one large cup of whole cold rice quite soft in milk, and while hot stir in a little wheat flour or rice flour; when cold add two eggs and a little salt, bake in small thin cakes on the griddle.
In every case in making rice flour bread, cake or pudding, a well boiled pap should be first made of all the milk and water and half the flour, and allowed to get perfectly cold before the other ingredients are added; it forms a support for them and prevents the flour from settling at the bottom; stir the whole a moment before it is set to cook.
SAVANNAH [GA] REPUBLICAN, November 27, 1862, p. 1, c. 3
[For the Savannah Republican.]
Practical Hints for Hard Times.
"What man has done, man may do."
NO. IV.—FOOD.
1. PRESERVING MEAT WITHOUT SALT.—We need salt as a relish to our food, but it is not essential to the preservation of our meats. The Indians used little or no salt, yet they preserved meat and even fish in abundance by drying. This can be accomplished by fire, by smoke or by sunshine; but the most rapid and reliable mode is by all of these agents combined. To do this select a spot having fullest command of sunshine. Erect there a wigwam five or six feet high, with an open top, in size proportioned to the quantity of meat to be cured, and protected from the winds so that all the smoke must pass through the open top. The meat cut into pieces suitable for drying (the thinner the better) is to be suspended on rods in the open comb, and a vigorous smoke made of half decayed wood, is to be kept up without cessation. Exposed thus to the combined influence of sunshine, heat and smoke, meat cut into slices not over an inch thick can be thoroughly cured in twenty-four hours. For thicker pieces there must be, of course, a longer time, and the curing of oily meat, such as pork, is more difficult than that of beef, venison or mutton.
To cure meat in the sun, hang it on the south side of your house, as near to the wall as possible without touching.
Savages cure fish by pounding it fine, and exposing it to the bright sun.
2. PEMMICAN is dried meat, pounded fine and packed in its own grease. Mr. Ballantyne, who was in the service of the Hudson Bay Company, gives the following account of the preparation of dried meat and pemmican: "Having shot a buffalo, the hunters cut lumps of his flesh and slitting it up into flakes or layers, hang it up in the sun or before a slow fire to dry, and the fat can be dried as well as the lean. In this state it is often made into packs and sent about the country to be consumed as dried meat. But when pemmican is wanted it has to go through another process; the meat, when dry, is pounded until it is broken into small pieces; these are put into a bag made of the buffalo's own hide, with the hair on the outside, and well mixed with melted grease; the top of the bag is then sewed up and the pemmican allowed to cool. In this state it may be eaten uncooked; but the men who subsist on it when travelling mix it with a little flour and water and boil it, in which state it is known by the elegant name of robbiboo. Pemmican is good, wholesome food, and will keep fresh for a great length of time." Galton, in his "Art of Travel," says: "The best pemmican is made by mixing five parts of pounded dry meat with four parts of melted or boiled grease, and put into a skin bag or tin can whilst warm and soft. The grease ought not to be very warm when poured on the dry meat."
4. WHEAT FLOUR.—"The finest of the wheat" is not always the best; the whiter the flour the less the nourishment. In pure white flour, the heart of the wheat (answering to the eye of a kernel of corn, and known as the sweetest and most nourishing part of the grain) is all sifted out. This rejected part is all contained in the cream colored "seconds" or "shorts," which are usually sold at flour mills at half price.
5. WHEAT BRAN.—It is stated by those who profess to know, as an important chemical and gastronomical fact, that there is more nourishment in one pound of wheat bran than there is in two pounds of white flour.
6. GRAHAM BREAD, or bread made from unbolted wheat, is coarse and rather unpalatable, but it is far more nutritious than bread made from more costly flour, besides which, it will go nearly twice as far in housekeeping, and prove ten times more wholesome.
7. MATURE BREAD.—When a wheaten loaf is allowed to stand and cool for some hours after being taken from the oven, it undergoes certain chemical changes which better prepare it for the digestive organs, and which make a less amount of the bread sufficient for the demands of the system. The difference in economy between the hot loaf and the cold is such that, in times of scarcity in the old countries, laws are sometimes passed forbidding the use of bread under a day old.
8. LEAVENED BREAD, when baked at the proper time, is more nutritious and more economical than the unleavened, because the sugary and glutinous parts are more fully developed. There are three stages of fermentation. Baked in the first of these, bread will be light and sweet; baked in the second, it will be light and insipid; and in the third, it will be light and sour. It is only when baked in the first of these stages that leavened bread is either economical or wholesome.
9. RICE FLOUR AND BREAD.—Rice consists almost wholly of starch. It is this which makes the fine bolted flour of rice so clammy and adhesive when wet, that it is difficult to be converted into palatable bread. This tendency to clamminess is best corrected by intermixing with it something which shall tend to keep the glutinous particles apart. Equal parts of bolted rice flour, corn meal, and the pulp of the sweet potatoe [sic], with a slight admixture of wheat flour, lightened with leaven, and made into a very soft dough, gives a pan (not loaf) of delightful bread.
A much more manageable form of rice flour, than the bolted, can be produced by pounding in an ordinary mortar. The rice grain must be softened by water, then partially dried, and the pulverized. The coarseness of the flour is a partial preventive of clamminess.
10. CORN MEAL AND BREAD.—Any field negro at the South can make better corn bread than can be found in Northern hotels. The simpler the process the better the bread. The only art practiced by the negro is in mixing well, and in allowing his dough to stand half an hour before baking; it is then in the incipient stage of the saccharine fermentation. Corn dough, allowed to stand over night, will rise without yeast.
Corn, when ground into meal, is apt to become musty or acid after a few weeks. This renders it unfit for army use, or even for storage at home. Whoever will take the trouble to kiln dry it, will find it no more difficult to keep than the flour of any other of the cereals.
What a treat the kiln dried meal would be to our boys in the army! Will not some one start a kiln for their supply?
11. GRINDING.—No doubt many a poor family has been straitened for want of access to the mill. Let such remember (if the information can reach them) that in the old Revolutionary War many a peck of wheat and other grain was ground in coffee mills and sifted in a sieve.
12. INDIAN SAFKEE [?], OR BIG HOMINY.—The Indians, who had no mills, had no difficulty in preparing their corn for use. One mode of preparing it is by means of lye. The grain is steeped in good strong lye until the cuticle or outer skin is dissolved, when it is thoroughly cleansed from the lye and boiled until soft. Another mode is by means of hot water and the mortar. The corn is to be scalded just long enough to loosen the cuticle without softening the grain. It is then to be pounded in a mortar and rubbed by hand until the husk is separated. Another mode pursued by the Indian was by the mortar and pestle alone. the mortar was a slightly dished block of wood, with a small cavity in the middle, about two or three inches wide, and the same deep. The pestle was like a rail splitter's maul, and the part used for beating was the handle—the corn being put into that little cavity in the mortar and then beaten to powder.
13. SUBSTITUTES FOR COFFEE.—Except in its stimulating qualities, and its peculiar and delicate aroma, coffee can be so perfectly counterfeited as to defy detection, by mixing together [illegible] the following substitutes in such [illegible] that the coffee taste of all of them shall predominate, and the peculiar flavor of no one of them shall be perceived: viz: Rye, wheat, barley (scalded and then parched,) okra seed, rice (parched black, but not ground,) sweet potatoes (cut into ribbons, or into dice, dried in the sun and then parched,) corn grits (parched to a dark brown,) sweet acorns, chiccory (parched brown, then broken and ground.) These should be parched separately, and then combined in about equal proportions, or in such proportion as experiment shall decide to be necessary. If possible, a little coffee should be combined, simply for truth's sake. The best critic can scarcely distinguish between the spurious compound and the real coffee.
14. THE SWEET POTATO.—All persons who have enjoyed the sugary sweetness of the sweet potato, [illegible] so as to bring out its candy. But has any one ever tried to extract that sweetness in the form of syrup? Who will make the experiment and let us have the result? Marooner, Sr.
THE SOUTHERN BANNER [ATHENS, GA], May 11, 1864, p. 1, c. 4
Good batter cakes.--Excellent batter cakes can be made without either milk or eggs.
Take equal portions of corn meal and flour, make into a better at night with warm water and a little yeast. Bake on the griddle in the morning, as you would any other batter cake. A little more flour than meal will be rather better than equal quantities. If kept too warm at night, the batter may become a little sour, which every house keeper knows can be easily remedied by adding a little soda.--Lex. Gaz.
SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY [ATLANTA, GA], August 29, 1861, p. 2, c. 4
Useful Hints to Planters' Wives.--Editors Rural:--The following recipes are at your service:
Corn Starch, or Farina.--Grate well filled green corn from the cob into a tub of clean water, say a bushel into each tub. Let it remain a few hours, then strain the contents of each tub into fresh water. The finest hair sifter or fine muslin must be used for a strainer. After straining into fresh water, let it remain twelve hours or more; then pour off the water--the starch will be precipitated to the bottom of the tub, which must be spread on a clean cloth, and dried in the sun. It must be kept stirred to prevent it from molding.--When thoroughly dry put it into glass jars.
Corn Starch Blanc Mange.--Take a teacup full of the starch, mix it up with cold water perfectly smooth; add this to a quart of milk which must be boiled, stir in the starch while the milk is boiling; it must be stirred while it is boiling to prevent it from burning. Let it boil up once or twice, then take off and pour it into moulds. This Blanc Mange must be eaten with loaf sugar and cream.--Any seasoning, such as lemon, or vanilla, can be used to season it; and if preferred the Blanc Mange can be sweetened while it is boiling. Mrs. W. P. W.
Auburn, near Laconia, Arkansas.
Michelle Hamilton is the winner of our college essay competition. She earned a BA in history from San Diego State University graduating as cum laude in 2009. Currently Michelle is working on her master’s in history from SDSU where she is writing her thesis - entitled “‘I Would Still Be Drowned in Tears’: The Lincolns and Spiritualism.”
Was Not that Genuine Heroism?
The Heroism and Sacrifice of Jennie Wade
The heroism and sacrifice of Mary Virginia “Jennie” Wade has been obscured through 150 years-worth of rumor, legend, and innuendo. Today when Jennie Wade is mentioned she is featured as minor figure in Civil War studies, serving as a statistic as having been the only civilian killed during the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863. Killed while baking biscuits for the Union soliders that surrounded her sister’s residence on July 3, 1863, Jennie quickly became a heroine in the Northern press. “While she was busily engaged in her patriotic work, a minie ball pierced her pure heart, and she fell, a holy sacrifice in her country’s cause,” poet Mary Henderson Eastman eulogized. However local jealousy over her being signaled out in the press has tarnished the young woman’s reputation to this day with whispered accusations of her disloyalty to the Union cause and sexual impropriety.
In popular culture, Jennie Wade is known only through the ghostly legends that surround the house where she died. In 2010 the popular television series Ghost Adventures introduced Jennie Wade to the present generation. The series host Zak Bagans alleged that while straddling the mannequin of Jennie Wade a spirit grabbed his derriere. Like most depictions of Jennie Wade, the television show failed to show the true Jennie Wade and give voice to her experiences during those dark days of July 1863. Once we dig past the legends and rumors we can see the true Jennie Wade and in the process get a better understanding of the heroism and sacrifice made by her 150 years ago.
If it had not been for the cataclysmic meeting of General Robert E. Lee’s Confederate forces and General George Meade’s Union forces on the rolling terrain that surround Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in July 1 to 3, 1863, Jennie Wade would have passed into obscurity. Born on May 21, 1843 to working-class parents, Jennie Wade entered a world where opportunities for her social advancement were limited. Her father, James Wade, Sr., had left his native Virginia to ply his trade as a tailor in Gettysburg, PA. In September 1850, James Wade was arrested for taking three hundred dollars that had dropped out of the pocket of a Gettysburg resident. Instead of returning the money, James took his ill-gotten gains into Maryland. Arrested and returned to Gettysburg, James was sentenced to two years in solitary confinement at the notorious Eastern State Penitentiary.
With her father incarcerated, Jennie would have been expected to aid her mother, Mary Ann Filby Wade, in supporting her siblings. This continued even after James Wade was released from prison. Mentally scarred by his time in solitary confinement, James was confined in the Adams County Alms House in 1852 where he would reside for the remainder of his life. To support her family, Mary Wade kept her husband’s tailoring trade operating. To further her family’s income Jennie also cared for six-year-old Isaac Brinkerhoff, the son of neighbor who was unable to walk.
Like most young women, Jennie fell in love with a neighborhood friend, Johnston “Jack” Skelly. However, whatever plans she was making for the future was rudely interrupted by the Civil War. Responding to President Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers to suppress the rebellion, Jack Skelly marched off to war in 1861. While Jack was serving the Union on the front lines, Jennie was supporting the Union on the home front. During the winter of 1861-1862 the 10th New York Cavalry were stationed in Gettysburg. Jennie helped bolster the morale of the regiment by visiting the camp where she repaired uniforms and invited some of her favorites to accompany her to church.
This behavior shocked some of the town’s more conservative residents who attempted to smear her reputation. Writing home to his mother, Jack Skelly remarked on the ugly rumors being circulated about Jennie, “their has somebody being trying to raise a fuss between us is my honest belief…for I never heard who was going there or what all the talk there was.” Jennie’s active social life would later be used against the young woman as evidence that she was engaging in sexual impropriety.
While Jennie was assisting her mother and writing letters to Jack, war clouds were slowly gathering on the horizon that would eventually engulf her home. Since the beginning of the war, the residents of Gettysburg had been aware that their town was vulnerable to Confederate invasion. Located only ten miles from the state border with Maryland, the town had been a stop on the Underground Railroad in the years leading up to the Civil War. So far, the town had lucked out, but that all changed in June 1863 when Lee’s Confederate forces invaded Pennsylvania. The news hit Gettysburg like a thunderclap. “This made us begin to realize the fact that we were in some danger from the enemy,” Gettysburg resident Sarah M. Broadhead recorded in her diary on June 15, 1863. Though the initial report proved to be false, the resident’s remained on edge.
After weeks of false reports, the Rebel’s finally made their appearance in Gettysburg on June 26, 1863. For Jennie Wade the events of this day would later cast doubts on her loyalty to the Union cause. The sudden emergence of the Confederates on the streets of Gettysburg sent the civilian population scurrying for cover. Concerned that their horses would be stolen, the resident’s attempted to secrete their valuable property out of Gettysburg. One such resident was James Pierce, a butcher, who ordered Jennie’s twelve-year-old brother, Samuel Wade, to take the family’s prized grey horse to the countryside. Despite the boy’s best effort to allude the Confederate’s, Sam and the horse were captured by the Rebels on the Baltimore Pike.
Matilda “Tillie” Pierce recalled the moment when she saw her family’s horse being paraded down the streets of Gettysburg by enemy soldiers. “As they were passing our house my mother beckoned to the raiders, and some of them rode over to where she was standing and asked what was the matter, Mother said to them: ‘You don’t want the boy! He is not our boy, he is only living with us,” Tillie recorded in her memoir. At this moment, Jennie Wade saw her brother being held in Confederate custody. The sight must have been horrifying. Earlier in the day, Jennie had seen her other brother, John James, off as a member the 26th Pennsylvania Emergency Regiment. Now one of her brothers was a prisoner of the Confederates.
Alone, without the aid of her mother who was attending to Jennie’s sister who had just given birth, the young woman tried to take care of the situation. Likely angry at the selflessness of the Pierces who placed a young boy in danger over a horse, Jennie lashed out at the Pierce family. “If the Rebs take our Sam, I don’t know what I’ll do with you folks,” Jennie angrily yelled at Mrs. Pierce. Years later, Tillie Pierce still could not understand Jennie’s position declaring, “Thus holding us responsible for her brother Sam’s safety even in times like that.” It is possible that Jennie tried to secure her brother’s release on her own. Testimony from Tillie Pierce hinted that it was Jennie who informed the Confederates that James Pierce was a Republican, claiming, “The information given to the Rebels, we afterwards learned, was the act of Sam’s sister…I am afraid her sympathies were not as much for the Union as they should have been. She certainly manifested a very unkind disposition toward our family, who had been doing all we could for her brother.”
Here we must separate what it meant to be loyal to the Union. For the Pierce family complete loyalty to the Union cause meant full support for the Republican Party that was waging the war. While Jennie might not have supported the politics of the war, the acts of charity she performed during the battle should once and for all stand testimony of her devotion to the Union soldiers.
Eventually through the intersession of Mary Wade, Sam was released from Confederate custody. The appearance of Confederate soldiers hinted that the dark clouds of war were finally coming to rest over the town of Gettysburg.
The long awaited battle finally started on the morning of July 1, 1863. The contest started out as a simple skirmish, but by the early afternoon it had quickly turned into a full battle between the Union and Confederate forces. At the start of the battle town resident’s went out to watch the battle and were soon caught in midst of the combat. “There was then a general stampede toward town and I quickly slipped from my perch and joined the retreat to the rear of our gallant men and boys,” Daniel Alexander Skelly recalled. It soon became apparent that fighting was coming close to the heart of the city. Gettysburg resident Michael Jacobs recorded, “Soon after the battle had begun, the residents of the west end of town were advised by General Reynolds to leave their residences, that the shot and shell of the enemy might not reach and injure them, and to retire to a position to the north and east of the borough.” The civilians had good reason to fear, during the Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia fought in December of 1862, the Union forces had fired upon the town to drive out the Confederates.
Frightened, Jennie Wade decided to evacuate to her sister’s duplex home on the south end of Baltimore Street near Cemetery Hill. Georgia Wade McClellan had married John McClellan, who was currently serving in the Union army, in 1862. Since June 26th, Jennie’s mother had been staying with Georgia who had given birth. At home caring for young Isaac and her youngest brother Harry, Jennie needed to be with her mother and older sister. The streets of Gettysburg by this time were clogged with fleeing civilians. Fannie J. Buehler later remembered the chaotic scene, “Officers dashed through the streets ordering everyone to their cellars, as the town would be shelled; people running hither and thither, not knowing what to do or where to go to safety.”
Jennie Wade must have felt tremendous relief when she at last arrived at Georgia’s home accompanied by her young charges. Yet, what at first appeared to be a refuge from the battle, soon turned into a living hell. Pushed by the Confederate forces, the Union forces were forced through the town eventually gathering on Cemetery Hill. The Union forces that were gathered around the McClellan residence soon noticed that there were inhabitants in the house. Coming to the door they begged for water and something to eat. Jennie sprang to action and furnished the beleaguered boys in blue with water and bread. The presence of Union soliders around the residence drew the attention of Confederate sharpshooters. Throughout the day a number of Union soldiers were killed or wounded in Georgia’s front yard.
Finally, the day ended, but rest in the McClellan residence would prove allusive for Jennie and her family as the moans and cries of the wounded soliders in the yard disturbed their sleep. Throughout the town most of the civilians were also having an uncomfortable night’s sleep. “Of course we had no rest last night,” Sarah M. Broadhead noted in her diary.
When day finally broke on July 2, 1863, Jennie Wade and her family woke to a chaotic scene. Nobody knew what the day would bring. Daniel Skelly would later recall the confusion experienced by the town’s residents, “Day dawned on the second of July bright and clear, and we did not know what to do or expect.” For Jennie, the day would bring terror and heroism.
Throughout the day Confederate sharpshooters continued to pelt Georgia McClellan’s house with bullets. The barrage of bullets made movement within the house risky. Despite the risks, Jennie Wade continued to answer the knocks on the door and windows from Union soliders requesting food and water. To compound the fear and stress for Jennie and her family during the afternoon a ten-pound Perrot shell hit the house. The impact rocked the house with the shell ripping through the roof and punching a hole in the second floor common wall. For Jennie the fear caused by the impact proved so great that she fainted from fear. Jennie’s shelter was not the only house hit by an errant shell. While in her neighbor’s cellar, Sarah Broadhead’s house was struck by a shell, as she latter recorded in her diary, “Whilst there a shell struck the house, but mercifully did not burst, but remained embedded in the wall, one half protruding.”
The second day of the battle ended with the same feeling of uncertainty for Jennie and her family as the day had begun. Throughout the town other residents recorded their fears. “To us, however, who were at the time within the Rebel lines, the result seemed doubtful; and gloomy forebodings filled our minds as we laid ourselves down to catch, if possible, a little sleep,” Michael Jacobs recorded.
July 3, 1863, dawned hot and humid and the day started early for Jennie Wade and her family. Arising at 4:00 a.m., Jennie and Harry slipped out of the safety of the house to gather water and fire wood. This movement within the house caused Union soldiers to again come to the house asking for food. Jennie informed the hungry men that she was preparing dough for biscuit’s and to come back later. In the midst of the chaos of battle, Jennie was thinking of others. Turing to her mother, Jennie declared, “If there is anyone in this house that is to be killed today, I hope it is me, as George has that little baby.”
Indeed, it seemed as if time had run out for one of the residents of the house. Since the birth of her baby, Georgia McClellan had been confined in her bed which had been placed in the downstairs parlor. Shortly after Jennie’s comment, a bullet ripped through the parlor window, hitting the fireplace mantel and coming to rest on the pillow next to Georgia and her baby. This incident must have unnerved the inhabitants of the house. But, there were hungry men to be fed and Jennie resumed her work in the indoor kitchen. As a measure of safety, the parlor door had been propped open to shelter Jennie and Mary Wade while they worked in the kitchen. Sadly, these measures would prove futile. While kneading the biscuit dough at around 8:30 a.m. a bullet ripped through the kitchen and parlor doors striking Jennie in the back. The bullet went through her heart coming to rest at the front of her corset. Jennie fell to the floor dead. Mary, who had her back turned to her daughter, heard the bullet hit and turned to see her fall to the floor. After a brief examination of her daughter’s body confirmed that her worst fears, she entered the parlor and said, “Georgia, your sister is dead.”
History will never know who pulled the trigger, though it is likely that the shot came from a Confederate sharpshooter stationed in the Rupp Tannery. It is likely that the Union soliders who had gathered around the McClellan residence waiting for their biscuits attracted the sharpshooter to open fire.
Upon realizing what had befallen her sister, Georgia McClellan let out a blood curdling scream which brought a number of Union soliders into the house. Seeing the body of such a young woman must have been a sobering moment for these battle hardened soldiers. Realizing that they had to get the family out of the house, the Union soldiers used the hole in the second floor common wall to evacuate the family through the residence of the connecting house. Mary Wade agreed to the plan as long as they brought Jennie with them. Jennie was then careful wrapped up in a quilt that Georgia had sewn when she was five years old and brought with her family. Safely situated in the cellar on the other side of the McClellan residence, Jennie was laid out on boards that were designed to house milk jugs.
In such a manner Jennie Wade’s family remained sheltered from the remainder of the battle. For Mary Wade and Georgia McClellan it must have seemed as if the hell that they had entered would never end. While in the cellar the family was protected from the conclusion of the battle. “The ground trembled, on which our house stood, and the awful continuous roar of the cannon was far worse than the heaviest thunder from heaven’s artillery,” Fannie Buehler would later recall.
Finally, the sounds of battle faded away and after 14 hours confined in the cellar the remainder of Jennie Wade’s family were free to emerge into the daylight. Once outside, the family hurriedly placed Jennie in a simple casket and buried her in Georgia’s backyard. The dead littered the earth and in the humid weather the dead had to be buried as quickly as possible. Jennie would remain in her sister’s backyard until more suitable arrangements could be made.
Following the battle of Gettysburg, the Northern press sized on the story of Jennie Wade as an example of female heroism. In February 1864, John Y. Foster writing for Harper’s New Monthly wrote about Jennie’s sacrifice declaring, “Was not that genuine heroism?” Soon the Northern press was churning out poems and songs dedicated to “The Heroine of Gettysburg.” All this attention focused towards Jennie Wade sparked resentment within the community of Gettysburg. One such individual was John Burns the man who rose to fame for joining the fight on the first day’s battle. Infuriated after having to share the spotlight, John Burns lashed back at Jennie’s memory declaring, “The less said about her the better…I called her a she-rebel.” These accusations of disloyalty would tarnish Jennie’s memory for decades.
Shrouded in the mists of rumor the real story of Jennie Wade is one of courage and sacrifice. It is the story of a simple woman who rose above and beyond what was expected of her and who ultimately sacrificed her life while caring for others. She was more than just the basis for ghostly legends—she was a real person with hopes and dreams that was snuffed out due to an act of war.
Primary Sources:
Alleman, Tillie Pierce. At Gettysburg, or What a Girl Saw and Heard of the Battle. New York: W. Lake Borland, 1889).
Broadhead, Sarah M. The Diary of a Lady of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, from June 15 to July 15, 1863. Hershey, PA: Gary T. Hawbaker, 2002.
Buehler, Fannie J. Recollections of the Rebel Invasion and One Woman’s Experience during the Battle of Gettysburg. Gettysburg, PA: Star and Sentinel Press, 1896, 1900.
Eastman, Mary Henderson. Jenny Wade of Gettysburg. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1864.
Foster, John Y. “Four Days at Gettysburg.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (February, 1864): 381-388.
“The Heroine of Gettysburg.” Daily Illinois State Journal, April 2, 1864.
Jacobs, Michael. Notes on the Rebel Invasion of Maryland and Pennsylvania, and the Battle of Gettysburg, July 1st, 2d, and 3d, 1863. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1864.
Skelly, Daniel Alexander. A Boy’s Experiences during the Battles of Gettysburg. Gettysburg, PA: Daniel Alexander Skelly, 1932.
Secondary Sources:
Bagans, Zak and Kelly Crigger. Dark World: Into the Shadows with the Lead Investigator of the Ghost Adventures Crew. Las Vegas: Victory Belt Publishing, 2010.
Booker, Bill. Jennie Wade Remembered. Gettysburg, PA: Kenneth Rohrbaugh, 2005.
Bryant, James K. The Battle of Fredericksburg: We Cannot Escape History. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2010.
Creighton, Margaret S. The Colors of Courage: Gettysburg’s Forgotten History: Immigrants, Women, and African Americans in the Civil War’s Defining Battle. New York: Basic Books, 2005.
Coco, Gregory A. A Strange and Blighted Land: Gettysburg: The Aftermath of a Battle. Gettysburg, PA: Thomas Publications, 1995.
Johnston, J.W. The True Story of “Jennie” Wade, a Gettysburg Maid. Rochester, NY: J.W. Johnston, 1917.
Small, Cindy L. The Jennie Wade Story: A True and Complete Account of the Only Civilian Killed during the Battle of Gettysburg. Gettysburg, PA: Thomas Publications, 1991.
Smith, Timothy H. John Burns: “The Hero of Gettysburg.” Gettysburg, PA: Thomas Publications, 2000.
Karissa Collins was the winner of the High School Scholarship Competition. Karissa attended Caesar Rodney High School in Dover, Delaware. Karissa has had an impressive high school career with varied interests and experiences and looks forward to attending college at either Eastern University or Gordon College.
SWCW Scholarship Winning Essay
Women were greatly known during the Civil War to be the greatest of spies. Maria Isabella Boyd was no exception. She was known for being the Confederate's most notorious spy. She utilized flattery and her knowledge to outwit the situations she was placed in. Her career began July 4, 1861 when a Union soldier began jeering at her mother, using vulgar and indecent language. Belle's defended her mother by shooting the inebriated soldier to death. In her defense she asked, “Shall I be ashamed to confess that I recall without one shadow of remorse the act by which I saved my mother from insult, perhaps from death - that the blood I then shed has left no stain on my soul, imposed no burden upon my conscience?” (Boyd 67). Her action was eventually justified and she was set free. This incident began her career as a Confederate spy at the age of seventeen.
Her strongest aegis was the way that she charmed and coquetted men. One time after she was captured by Union soldiers, “Boyd claimed to have sweet talked them into escorting her back to Confederate lines, where she promptly had them arrested” (DeMarco para. 5). Although Boyd refused to give men any sexual pleasures, she still enjoyed tempting her prey in order for them to reveal important information, which she then imparted to the Confederate army. Belle was arrested approximately 6 or 7 times and while in jail remained an avid Confederate Army supporter, by waving the Confederate flag, singing Dixie, and communicating with outside supporters through unique methods. She remained confident and daring even after her multiple cases of detainment. Boyd boarded the Greyhound in 1864 carrying Confederate papers to England. However, the trip was cut short when the ship was seized. Ironically, later that year on August 25th, she became wed to Samuel W. Hardinge, one of the Union naval officers who had stopped the ship.
After her career as a spy, Belle settled in London for two years and wrote her two-volume memoir. Upon returning to America, she did not return to nursing, like she had done before the war, but was a successful actress on stage and gave lectures about her wartime experiences. She married twice more to John Hammond, and had four children, and to Nathaniel High, Jr.. Belle's demise came in 1900 due to a heart attack. Her cunning skill made her a important figure to the Confederates during the great American Civil War.
Work Cited
Boyd, Belle I. "In Camp and Prison: Volume I." Documenting the American South. Library of Congress/Ameritech National Digital Library Competition, 2004. Web. 9 Jan. 2013.
.
DeMarco, Michael. "Belle Boyd (1844–1900)." Encyclopedia Virginia. Ed. Brendan Wolfe. 9
Jan. 2013. Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. 31 Mar. 2011
.
"Maria "Belle" Boyd." Civil War Trust. Civil War Trust, n.d. Web. 9 January 2013.
To fight aloud is very brave - (138)
To fight aloud is very brave - (138)
To fight aloud is very brave - (138)
To fight aloud is very brave - (138)
To fight aloud, is very brave -
But gallanter, I know
Who charge within the bosom
The Calvary of Wo -
Who win, and nations do not see -
Who fall - and none observe -
Whose dying eyes, no Country
Regards with patriot love -
We trust, in plumed procession
For such, the Angels go -
Rank after Rank, with even feet -
And Uniforms of snow.
Source: The Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by R.W. Franklin (Harvard University Press, 1999)
To fight aloud, is very brave -
But gallanter, I know
Who charge within the bosom
The Calvary of Wo -
Who win, and nations do not see -
Who fall - and none observe -
Whose dying eyes, no Country
Regards with patriot love -
We trust, in plumed procession
For such, the Angels go -
Rank after Rank, with even feet -
And Uniforms of snow.
Source: The Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by R.W. Franklin (Harvard University Press, 1999)
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2012. 160 pp. $24.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8093-3130-7.
Reviewed by Sarah Handley-Cousins (University at Buffalo SUNY)
Published on H-CivWar (August, 2013)
Commissioned by Hugh F. Dubrulle
Repairing the "Melancholy Harvest"
Several years ago, I attended a small Civil War reenactment on a college campus. Visitors browsed through several small displays, but the one that garnered the most attention belonged to a surgeon. He and his assistant deftly “amputated” a leg, replicating the stomach-turning sound of the operation by sawing through pieces of wood and metal piping. Spectators were drawn to the scene and watched with a combination of fascination and horror. There was something about the imagined surgery that seemed to evoke an intrinsically Civil War experience.
In recent years, amputation has captured the attention of historians as it did those reenactment visitors. Several historians have begun to consider the issues that arose from the physical destruction of the Civil War. Most works have focused on the postbellum period, examining the issues that faced amputees as they tried to reintegrate into a civilian society. Several historians have considered how the bodily disarticulation caused by the war affected the creation of Civil War memory. Brian Jordan, Jalynn Olsen Padilla, and Frances Clarke, for example, have all investigated the essays written by the contestants of William Oland Bourne’s left-handed writing contests, held in 1866 and 1867, and have drawn important conclusions regarding amputees’ attitudes toward their disabilities, the war, and reunification. Other historians have considered the anxiety expressed by the American public at the specter of so many disabled men returning home--could they work? Would they be marriageable? How should their government repay veterans who had made such a sacrifice?[1]
Guy R. Hasegawa’s new work Mending Broken Soldiers adds an important dimension to the conversation. While recent attention to amputees has focused on the social, cultural, and political reactions to amputation after the conclusion of the war, very little exists that explains the practical consideration taken to provide amputees with prosthetic limbs during the war years. Hasegawa attempts to fill that gap by detailing both the Union and Confederate programs to provide artificial limbs between 1861 and 1865.
Hasegawa begins with an examination of the foundations of the American prosthetics industry. The manufacture of artificial limbs was by no means new when war was declared. The first patent for a limb was issued in 1846 to B. Frank. Palmer, an amputee who became a well-known prosthetic manufacturer. Over the next two decades, many new manufacturers entered the market, each with slightly different designs for their limbs. Some made their artificial legs out of vulcanized rubber, arguing that the material lasted longer than the traditional wood. Palmer apparently wrapped his wooden arms in “delicate fawnskin,” while his great rival, Douglas Bly, covered his with a “delicate tinted flesh-colored enamel, shaded to suit each particular case” (p. 13). Still others crafted limbs from brass, steel, rawhide, and even whalebone. Most of the limbs were articulated, meaning they had functioning joints, but a few experimented with lateral motion ankles or movable fingers. The proliferation of limbs in the antebellum years led to fierce competition. Manufacturers published advertisements in popular newspapers and magazines that boasted endorsements from well-known amputees or respected physicians, giving the growing industry increasing visibility.
When Congress passed an act to provide limbs to Union amputees in 1862, the competition between Northern manufacturers grew more intense. Congress designated $15,000 (a small figure compared to subsequent years) to purchase legs, and tasked Army Surgeon General William A. Hammond with deciding how to best use the sum. Hammond created a committee of several of the best military and civilian surgeons in the country to evaluate artificial legs, decide on price points, and choose what kind of prosthetics to provide. Should they keep it simple with plain pegs, or consider the more modern articulated models? After much deliberation, they finally agreed upon five manufacturers, B. Frank. Palmer, Douglas Bly, E. D. Hudson, William Selpho, and Benjamin Jewett, to provide articulated limbs at fifty dollars each. Despite his efforts, William Hammond was ousted by Edwin Stanton in 1863 and replaced with Joseph K. Barnes, who faced a nearly identical challenge when he was required to choose arm manufacturers.
Perhaps the most fascinating story in Hasegawa’s volume is the surprising saga of the attempt to supply limbs in the Confederacy. Many historians would have focused their energies on examining the policies of either the Union or the Confederacy, but Hasegawa does an admirable job of exploring both. The result is an important comparison between the two programs and, by extension, the two governments. When the Confederate Congress failed to make a decision regarding the provision of limbs in 1863, Mississippi minister Charles K. Marshall founded the Association for the Relief of Maimed Soldiers (ARMS). ARMS became the sole provider of prosthetic legs to Southern soldiers, without any recognition or assistance from the Confederate government, and run, essentially alone, by its secretary, William Allen Carrington. Since the South only had two limb producers, neither of which produced arms, Carrington faced a complicated undertaking. Carrington was able to secure two leg manufacturers, James E. Hanger and G. W. Wells, though at significantly higher prices than those paid by the United States to Northern manufacturers. Ironically, ARMS was never able to provide any artificial arms.
What is most compelling about the story of ARMS is that its struggle is emblematic of the larger problems of the Confederacy. “Indeed,” Hasegawa writes, “the South’s artificial-limb makers faced the same obstacles that hindered the Confederacy’s other businesses: a scarcity of skilled workers, shortages of vital materials, and ever-increasing prices”(p. 57). Conscription made it incredibly difficult to maintain a workforce with the skills to create artificial limbs, and although exemptions were supposedly allowed for work details, the dire military straits of the Confederacy in 1864 and 1865 made these details scarce. Carrington’s manufacturers struggled so much to get raw materials that he pleaded with J. Marion Sims to “procurefiles, brass wires for springs--gutta percha or india rubber, & some of the other constituents of the legs” while the physician was in Paris (p. 59). ARMS agents worked somewhat successfully to solicit donations, but these weren’t enough to cover the organization’s expenses. Carrington hoped to get state governments to reimburse ARMS for providing their soldiers with artificial limbs, but was never successful. According to Hasegawa, several states promised donations, but only Louisiana actually gave money. Carrington, along with several other ARMS officers, had to pour their own money into the ARMS coffers to keep it afloat. On March 11, 1865, the Confederate Congress passed a “Bill for the Relief of Maimed Soldiers,” which, among other provisions, exempted ARMS from manufacturer’s taxes, gave them access to materials at cost, and secured them skilled workers on details. This would have made a tremendous difference for the organization, but the bill was passed just weeks before the final defeat of the Confederacy. The record of ARMS ends on March 31, 1865.
In the final chapter of Mending Broken Soldiers, Hasegawa compares the Union and Confederate programs to supply limbs and argues convincingly that despite its many disadvantages ARMS matched the Union program in limb distribution during its short fifteen months of operation. The two Confederate producers were able to nearly outpace four of the five Union manufacturers in their production of legs, despite their struggle to obtain materials. However, what is missing is a discussion of how much ARMS could have accomplished if the Confederate government had only found the needs of its disabled soldiers of national importance. This shortcoming on the part of the South calls to mind Stephanie McCurry’s arguments in Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South (2010) regarding the Confederacy’s reluctance to provide support for its women, while using the same women as a crucial part of the ideological underpinning of the war itself. Hasegawa’s work suggests that Southern politicians saw soldiers in much the same way. The Confederacy depended upon the bodies of men to fill its gray uniforms, yet dragged its feet to help when those bodies returned, broken, from the war.
Hasegawa’s description of the continuing efforts to provide limbs to Union veterans under the Civil War pension system also raises important points. In 1870, legislation made it possible for veterans to receive an artificial limb, or its monetary value, every five years. Hasegawa’s examination of the number of limbs issued during that period shows that veterans overwhelmingly chose commutation payments instead of new prosthetics, suggesting that veterans were more likely to find themselves in need of money rather than another limb. Further, Hasegawa reminds us that aside from pension payments, limbs, and commutation funds, “a veteran with an artificial limb could not look to the government for assistance in mastering his prosthesis, finding a job, or dealing with the other difficulties that attended his injury” (p. 79). Civilians and politicians made much of their ability to “mend broken soldiers,” but it would take far more than an artificial limb to do that.
Hasegawa has filled a gap in the literature on disability in the Civil War era, and the accompanying database of soldiers who received limbs will be a great asset to students and scholars. While this book focuses more on relaying facts than on drawing conclusions, Hasegawa raises important points that will inspire future scholars to ask new questions about disability, the state, and the Civil War.
Note
[1]. For more on Civil War amputees, see Brian Matthew Jordan, “Living Monuments:” Union Veteran Amputees and the Embodied Memory of the Civil War,” Civil War History 57, no. 2 (June 2011); Jalynn Olsen Padilla, “Army of Cripples: Civil War Amputees, Disability and Manhood in Victorian America” (PhD diss., University of Delaware, 2007); Frances Clarke, War Stories: Suffering and Sacrifice in the Civil War North (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012); Lisa Herschbach, “Fragmentation and Reunion: Medicine, Memory, and Body in the American Civil War” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1997); James Marten, Sing Not War: The Lives of Union and Confederate Veterans in Gilded Age America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011); and Megan Kate Nelson, Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012).
If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the list discussion logs at: .
Citation: Sarah Handley-Cousins. Review of Hasegawa, Guy R., Mending Broken Soldiers: The Union and Confederate Programs to Supply Artificial Limbs. H-CivWar, H-Net Reviews. August, 2013.
URL:
University Press of Kansas, Lawrence 2011. xii + 371 pp. $39.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7006-1797-5.
Reviewed by A. James Fuller
Published on H-CivWar (May, 2012)
Commissioned by Martin Johnson
The Civil War’s Impact on an Indiana County
A resurgence of scholarship in political and social history has begun to reexamine the Civil War in the North. Moving beyond studies of the home front, the best of these works reinterpret the ways in which Northerners experienced the entire period from the antebellum years through the Reconstruction era. This new periodization connects the prewar and postwar years and looks at both the continuities and changes wrought by the war that redefined the United States. Nicole Etcheson’s splendid microhistory of Putnam County, Indiana, brings together the now-tired lenses of race, class, and gender with political history, local matters, and memory in a groundbreaking study that shows how the Civil War transformed life in a Midwestern community.
For a generation of historians, race, class, and gender have offered the conceptual framework for insightful analysis of the past. Etcheson, Alexander M. Bracken Professor of History at Ball State University, employs this familiar conceptual triad at the local level, combining them with gripping stories embedded in the context of place as well as time, illustrating how well-worn concepts might still be usefully applied to gain new insights and fresh perspectives. She argues that for a “microhistory to have validity, the community under study must have some claim to representativeness or significance.” Etcheson is quick to note that “no single location, of course, can represent the larger society,” but, still, “a rural Midwestern community such as Putnam County, Indiana, may tell us much about a Northern society that was itself still primarily agrarian” (p. 13). She then demonstrates that the county serves as an ideal representation for Northern society in the era by listing the quantitative evidence showing that the area was both agrarian and industrial enough, both rural and urban enough, both politically and demographically diverse enough to offer insights in comparison with the rest of the North. She then argues that gender roles, racial views, class relationships, and political power were all affected during a generation marked by war.
Etcheson begins with the story of an ax murderer, using the grisly tale of a man killing his wife in 1857 and his subsequent trial and execution as a window on the antebellum world of Putnam County. Despite what a traveler might have surmised while observing the countryside, farms, and villages along the National Road, the county was far from a tranquil rural idyll. The growing market economy brought not only more industry and the profit motive, but also the expansion of internal improvements like roads and railroads. Class divisions surfaced politically in issues like temperance, as nativist fears of immigrants combined with Protestant Christian worries about the dangers of alcohol. Differences between the emerging middle class in places like Greencastle and the rural farmers revealed themselves in different ideas about gender. Middle-class notions of separate spheres challenged the old patriarchal order, but change was slow in coming, as most county citizens held to male-dominated views. The new Republican Party represented the middle-class residents and sought a more active government, while the Democrats held to the Jacksonian principles favored by the poor and rural factions of the county. White supremacy prevailed in Putnam County, as few African Americans lived in the area and those who did were pushed out in the decade before the war. Democrats appealed to racism, as local politicians supported the exclusion of blacks from Indiana (a measure passed as part of the new state constitution in 1851) even as Republicans rallied their supporters with antislavery rhetoric designed to whip up fears of the growing Slave Power in the South. Thus, as represented in Putnam County, the antebellum North was already experiencing the conflicts wrought by a changing society.
Prewar conflict expanded once the fighting began. Putnam County Democrats led by politicians like Daniel Voorhees resisted the efforts of Republicans like President Abraham Lincoln and Indiana Governor Oliver Morton. Violence erupted, as Indiana’s own internal civil war caused riots, gun battles, and mob actions. Unionists battled the Copperheads (as the most extreme Democratic opponents of the war were called), draft evasion was widespread, and secret societies operated even as official, legal politics continued with electoral victories and defeats for both of the political parties. Morton and other Republicans recognized that they needed the support of War Democrats to maintain power and win the war and this required them to pursue a more bipartisan agenda under the auspices of the Unionist party. But they still attempted to implement Republican policies designed to extend industrial capitalism and expand the power of the government. The divided Democrats went to great lengths to support their various positions, with War Democrats cooperating with their political rivals while those opposed to the war sometimes engaged in treasonous plotting against the Union. Both parties tried to fix elections, and the violence that tore the community apart made it difficult to forget the bitterness it engendered. Indeed, as Etcheson puts it, the war’s “animosities shattered county residents’ faith in the power of shared political principles to transcend partisan differences.” In fact, “the Civil War had so divided Putnam County that its people could no longer join together even to celebrate a universally beloved Union” (p. 122), as the two parties sponsored separate, exclusive Fourth of July celebrations in 1863. The war affected gender roles, as women fulfilled the tasks usually done by the men now gone off to fight. Families struggled to maintain the bonds that held them together through letters and packages sent to the soldiers and visits home or to the front. Such efforts allowed men to keep their authority, as they directed family affairs from afar. Women worked in charitable organizations to aid the war effort, the community tried to help the soldiers’ families with measures like reduced rent, and everyone worried about money. Despite their efforts to maintain contact, the war created a huge gap in experience between soldiers and civilians. Of course, the “greatest example of the gulf between soldiers and civilians was in the reality of death,” as many soldiers died during the war and families could not understand what the men had seen even as they often dealt with their own grief over the loss of loved ones. Etcheson argues that, ultimately, “the war did little change gender roles,” as “both soldiers and civilians struggled to preserve their roles as providers, fathers, and community members despite the war’s disruptions” (p. 147). Men who fought were changed, but they were not disconnected from home. Meanwhile, women “accepted the political or social roles assigned to them as women; they sought to accommodate the authority of even absent males.” But the war “radically changed the position of African Americans. Blacks’ role in the war threatened white supremacy and the racial order of prewar society” (p. 147). Indeed, African Americans serving as soldiers convinced many in Putnam County that blacks should enjoy full citizenship, although some racist whites resisted any notions of emancipation meaning equality.
The postwar period brought struggles over the meaning of the war and the settlement of the peace and Putnam County, like the rest of the country, was divided over the issues of Reconstruction. The political battles over Reconstruction legislation animated debates in Indiana as well as the South. Economic policy mattered, as the dramatic growth of industrial capitalism and class conflict spurred by the war continued in the so-called Gilded Age. Putnam County residents argued about currency, banks, railroads, immigration, and the rights of farmers and workers. Republicans waved the bloody shirt to remind voters of the Civil War even as the Democrats tried to offer an alternative and the Grange attempted to organize farmers. Everyone accused their rivals of corruption and evil intent. The Radical Republicans pushed a new racial order and supported the expansion of government to achieve it, but they also used that government power to promote capitalism rather to regulate it. Thus, the victorious party became conservative on economic issues. The Democrats held to conservative policies socially, but increasingly became associated with criticism of capitalism. But the national government committed itself to supporting the war’s veterans and pensions gave the former soldiers “unique economic advantages--and status as the saviors of the nation” (p. 197). Putnam County erected monuments to honor their war heroes and soldiers’ organizations were formed. Republican politicians used the Grand Army of the Republic “as a political vehicle” (p. 207), and the veterans enjoyed the benefits of government power in the form of pensions. Women’s clubs in Putnam County, however, did not “lead woman to challenge precepts of their society.” While women’s rights “received more support in the later decades of the nineteenth century than in the past” (p. 219), women mostly continued in traditional roles. Even when they were active in movements like temperance, women found themselves subordinate to male leaders. Men were still breadwinners and still held authority. Class divisions still animated politics. The issues were sometimes different, but much continued over the course of the generation that spanned from the 1850s to the dawn of the twentieth century. The one area where Putnam County saw truly dramatic change was race. In 1879-80, large numbers of African Americans became Exodusters, fleeing the South after the official end of Reconstruction. Some Exodusters came to Putnam County, where they met with ambivalence from white citizens. To be sure, some white residents held to their racist views and opposed black settlement. But many in the county embraced the emancipationist vision of the Civil War and adopted new views of African Americans. Where they often had thought of blacks as lazy before the war, many whites in Putnam County changed their minds after seeing black soldiers and hardworking black citizens. These egalitarian visions “marked a revolutionary change from the attitudes of the prewar period, in which antiblack racism had been universally accepted” (p. 259). Racial attitudes changed again in later decades, but the Civil War generation underwent a tremendous shift.
A fine storyteller, Etcheson traces the lives of individuals, allowing the reader to “get to know” the characters. But she might have given more attention to economic issues other than class conflict. In her conclusion, Etcheson employs the concept of historical memory to show how the Civil War generation recalled the war that dominated their entire lives. She uses the story of the building of the Indianapolis Solders’ and Sailors’ Monument on the Circle in downtown Indianapolis as another window into the world of Putnam County. In this brief section, one wishes that the author had included the Unionist/Nationalist memory as well as the reconciliationist and emancipationist visions of the Civil War, but that her work raises more questions only points to its value. A Putnam County resident was the leading proponent of building the monument dedicated in 1889 and Etcheson argues that the “monument’s story captures many aspects of the Civil War era in the North” (p. 262). The monument honored the soldiers and political leaders, commemorated “the contribution of women” (p. 263) and, unusually for Civil War memorials, also included a representation of emancipation. The meanings of the images on the statue remain controversial. For example, the emancipationist vision of a slave holding up his broken chains to the goddess Peace stirred debate in the early twenty-first century as an artist used it as a model for a piece along Indianapolis’s cultural trail, raising objections from those who saw it as racist. Etcheson notes that the rendering “is typical in its representation of the helplessness of the slave and his need for others to liberate him” (p. 266). Clearly, the memory of the Civil War continues to be contested today. But the monument also captured the visions of a generation at war and the story serves as a fitting end to a well-written book that contributes much to our understanding of the Civil War in the North.
Citation: A. James Fuller. Review of Etcheson, Nicole, A Generation at War: The Civil War Era in a Northern Community. H-CivWar, H-Net Reviews. May, 2012.
URL:
© Copyright 2013. You may not photocopy, re-use or republish any portion, column or article of this newsletter for any purpose without written permission. For permission, write athomeandinthefield@
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At Home and in the Field
The Newsletter of The Society for Women and the Civil War
athomeandinthefield@ Volume XII, Number 3
Our mission statement: To increase awareness and understanding of women's roles related to the Civil War through education and scholarship.
What do Belle Boyd and Jennie Wade have in common?
Belle Boyd and Jennie Wade are the subjects of the essays that won this year’s Scholarship Contest.. See the wonderful essays that won the awards in this issue of At Home and in the Field.
“Our Women and the War” Harper’s Weekly, September 6, 1862 page 570
Cake, Pudding and Pie Recipes from Southern Newspapers
Collected by Vicki Betts
“Was Not that Genuine Heroism?” The Heroism and Sacrifice of Jennie Wade”
Michelle L. Hamilton
Belle Boyd
by Herman Melville
Mending Broken Soldiers: The Union and Confederate Programs to Supply Artificial Limbs.
Guy R. Hasegawa.
A Generation at War: The Civil War Era in a Northern Community.
Nicole Etcheson
Thanks to all our members and readers. Please remember that At Home and in the Field is an e-journal of and for the members of the Society for Women and the Civil War. Please feel free to send comments, suggestions and writings featuring your own interest to our editor at athomeandinthefield@
We are seeking member involvement on one time or serial bases. We are interested in any member submissions including reviews of books, articles, museums and their current exhibits, events, websites, archives, libraries, collections and artifacts. If it is of interest to you, it is probably of interest of many of our other members.
If you are interested in becoming a one-time contributor, a serial contributor or are interested in becoming a columnist for At Home and in the Field, please contact our editor, Meg Galante-DeAngelis at athomeandinthefield@
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