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At Home and in the Field
Volume VIII
At Home and in the Field
Number 2
The Newsletter of The Society for Women and the Civil War
[email protected]
Volume XII, Number 3
Thanks to those members who renewed their memberships! Welcome to all new members!
Remember, an SWCW membership makes a great gift all year round!
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.
1
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
[email protected] or [email protected]
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.
Cake, Pudding and Pie Recipes
from Southern Newspapers
Collected by Vicki Betts
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
[AUGUSTA, GA],
&
SENTINEL
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.
SAVANNAH
[GA]
REPUBLICAN,
November 27, 1862, p. 1, c. 3
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.
[For
the
Savannah
Republican.]
Practical
Hints
for
Hard
Times.
"What man has done, man may do."
NO. IV.—FOOD.
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.
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.
“Was Not that Genuine
Heroism?” The Heroism and
Sacrifice of Jennie Wade”
Michelle L. Hamilton
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
Confederates.
a
prisoner
of
the
clouds of war were finally coming to rest
over the town of Gettysburg.
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.”
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.
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
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 sherebel.” 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.
Belle Boyd
by Herman Melville
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.
<http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/boyd1/boy
d1.html>.
DeMarco, Michael. "Belle Boyd (1844–1900)."
Encyclopedia Virginia. Ed. Brendan Wolfe. 9
Jan. 2013. Virginia Foundation for the
Humanities. 31 Mar. 2011
<http://www.EncyclopediaVirginia.org/Bo
yd_Belle_1844-1900>.
"Maria "Belle" Boyd." Civil War Trust. Civil War
Trust, n.d. Web. 9 January 2013.
Mending Broken Soldiers: The
Union and Confederate Programs
to Supply Artificial Limbs.
Guy R. Hasegawa.
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: http://hnet.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl.
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: http://www.hnet.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=38839
A Generation at War: The Civil
War Era in a Northern
Community.
Nicole Etcheson
University Press of Kansas, Lawrence 2011.
xii + 371 pp. $39.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-07006-1797-5.
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. HCivWar, H-Net Reviews. May, 2012.
URL: http://www.hnet.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=35453
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