301 WOMEN, CONTRIBUTIONS OF

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1 301 WOMEN, CONTRIBUTIONS OF own mistakes. In fact, at least one spy was operating out of Winder s own office. Moreover, Winder could be bribed to provide a Confederate travel pass a requirement for anyone wanting to travel throughout Confederate lands in exchange for money, gifts, or favors. Several Union spies later reported that they got their passes by paying Winder $100 or more. Prior to the war, Winder was an instructor at the U.S. Military Academy, having graduated there himself in 1820, but even after many years in the U.S. Army he had failed to rise above the rank of major. Therefore, he did not hesitate to join the newly formed Confederacy when Confederate president Jefferson Davis, one of his former students, asked him to serve as the provost marshal of Richmond. Winder did a poor job from the beginning, particularly in regard to hiring the agents who worked under him. The agents were largely disreputable men who often openly drank on duty. In fact, one of these men, supposed spycatcher Philip Cashmeyer, was actually a part of a network of Union spies headed by a local woman, Elizabeth Van Lew, whom Winder failed to recognize as a Union agent. Winder unwittingly made it easier for such people to get information on Confederate troop movements by posting on a wall in his office the names and sizes of all Confederate regiments in his area. The Confederacy finally recognized Winder s incompetence and transferred him to another job, that of supervising the distribution of supplies to prisoners of war. At the same time, he was promoted to the rank of brigadier general. But Winder proved incompetent at this assignment as well, often failing to send supplies where they were needed. Winder often complained of being overworked and fatigued, and when he died in 1865 his physician cited these two conditions as the reason for his death. See also spies; Van Lew, Elizabeth. Wirz, Henry (Heinrich Hermann) ( ) Confederate captain Henry Wirz was the only soldier, Confederate or Union, to be tried and executed for war crimes once the Civil War was over. Born in Switzerland, he claimed to be a physician when he immigrated to America sometime before the Civil War but appears to have had no medical training. For most of the war he served as a sergeant in the Fourth Louisiana Infantry, but on March 27, 1864, he was sent to Andersonville, a prison camp in Georgia, to manage its day-to-day activities. Wirz was later blamed for the prison s deplorable living conditions, although many of Andersonville s problems had been created by his superiors. Near the war s end, Wirz was arrested at Andersonville and brought to trial in Washington, D.C., where he was hanged on November 10, Transcripts of his trial were then published by the U.S. government as a means of keeping alive anti-southern sentiments after the war. See also Andersonville; executions; prisons and prisoners of war. women, contributions of Women from both the North and the South made many contributions to the war effort. Some donated handmade goods to the military, while others volunteered their time in charity efforts to support the war and its soldiers. Still others took up jobs traditionally performed by men, because during the war there were not enough male workers outside of the military. For example, most workers in ordnance laboratories and factories (places that developed and manufactured ammunition) were women, as were many telegraph operators. Women also served as doctors or nurses on the battlefield or as spies behind enemy lines. In the South, where clothing and other supplies became scarce as the war progressed, many women sewed or knitted

2 WOMEN, CONTRIBUTIONS OF 302 clothing and other items for soldiers. One of the most industrious knitters during the war was reputed to be Mary Custis Lee, the wife of Confederate general Robert E. Lee. By May 1864, with the help of her three grown daughters, she had made over four hundred pairs of socks for Confederate soldiers, many in her husband s Army of Northern Virginia. Other women contributed their nursing rather than sewing skills. By some estimates, more than three thousand women served as nurses, either official or unofficial, during the Civil War. In the South, where the majority of battles took place, many women entered nursing out of necessity when wounded soldiers showed up on their doorsteps. Their informal, temporary field hospitals were known as wayside hospitals, and although these facilities did not have the physicians and medical supplies of the formal, big-city Northern and Southern hospitals, they still might treat hundreds of soldiers. A wayside hospital near High Point, North Carolina, for example, served 5,795 Confederate soldiers between September 1863 and May A few women also served as hospital administrators. For example, after Confederate president Jefferson Davis called on citizens in Richmond, Virginia, to create private hospitals to care for soldiers wounded in the 1861 First Battle of Bull Run, Sally L. Tompkins convinced a local judge, John Robertson, to convert his home into the twenty-two-bed Robertson Hospital, which she would manage. She remained in charge of this facility throughout the war, even after Davis instituted a requirement that all Confederate hospitals be run by military officers. (In order to retain Tompkins as the hospital s administrator, Davis made her a cavalry captain; she was the only woman ever commissioned as a Confederate army officer.) Even though most Northern women lived far from the war s battlefields, they too contributed nursing care to soldiers. One prominent Civil War nurse was Mary Ann Bickerdyke, who served under Union general Ulysses S. Grant as the head of nursing, hospital, and welfare services for his western armies during the Civil War. She followed his soldiers from conflict to conflict, establishing field hospitals as needed. Near the end of the war, she did the same for General William Tecumseh Sherman, accompanying his forces on their march from Atlanta, Georgia, to the sea. Between 1861 and 1865, Bickerdyke provided nursing care on at least nineteen battlefields. Perhaps the most prominent Civil War nurse was Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross. She nursed wounded soldiers who were sent to Washington, D.C., to recuperate, organized an agency whose purpose was to ensure that medical supplies reached wounded soldiers on the battlefield, and was involved in fundraising activities in New England that helped send nurses, including herself, to the front lines. Barton and Bickerdyke were professional nurses, but others took up nursing simply because they were already on the front lines and wanted to help. These women were the officers wives who accompanied their husbands to military camps and provided various volunteer services, including cooking, washing dishes and clothes, sewing, and tending to the wounded. Sometimes called daughters of the regiment, they generally were kept far from the fighting, although some women did end up in the thick of combat. For example, Marie Tebe, whose husband was with the 27th and then the 114th Pennsylvania Infantry, was reportedly in heavy action at least thirteen times and tended to the wounded at the Battle of Chancellorsville even during a barrage from enemy artillery. A few Northern women were fullfledged physicians rather than nurses, although female doctors were a rarity in the

3 303 WOMEN, CONTRIBUTIONS OF nineteenth century. For example, Mary Edwards Walker, a graduate of Syracuse Medical College in New York, tried to enlist in the Union army immediately after the Civil War began. When she was denied a commission, she volunteered her medical services without pay, thereby becoming the first female surgeon in the U.S. Army. She is also the only female veteran ever to receive a Congressional Medal of Honor for her services. After a short stint at a hospital in Washington, D.C., Walker spent two

4 WOMEN, CONTRIBUTIONS OF 304 years as a battlefield surgeon, administering to Union soldiers during such conflicts as the Battle of Fredericksburg and the Battle of Chickamauga. Other female physicians served out of political activism. Specifically, in April 1861 Drs. Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell held public meetings at their New York Infirmary, a hospital staffed entirely by women, where they encouraged ninetyone women to sign a letter demanding that the government create a soldiers relief organization. This eventually led to the establishment of the U.S. Sanitary Commission on June 9, 1861, which was charged with overseeing all army hospitals. The South had its political activists as well. Some, like the Blackwells, were dedicated to improving the treatment of wounded soldiers. Others were concerned with improving conditions for all Southerners. Approximately one thousand women marched in front of the governor s house in Richmond, Virginia, on April 2, 1862, to protest the high prices and meager supplies of food in the South. Southern women also took a stand against the occupation of their lands by Union soldiers. In particular, after the Union forces of Major General Benjamin F. Butler occupied New Orleans, Louisiana, in April 1862, the women of the city insulted or even spat on the soldiers they saw in the street. One woman even dumped a chamber pot filled with human excrement on the head of Captain David Farragut from her second-story window. Others sang Confederate songs in the street. The only way that Butler could stop this abuse was by issuing General Order 28 on May 15, 1862 also known as the Woman s Order decreeing that any woman caught repeatedly insulting a Union soldier by word, gesture, or other means would be thereafter treated as though she were the town prostitute. In other words, the woman would be derided with vulgar comments and obscene gestures in return for her behavior, and if she continued it she might be fined or imprisoned. Even before the war broke out, women in both the North and the South expressed their political views on issues related to the conflict, especially slavery. To this end, many women produced books and articles that argued in favor of giving slaves their freedom. For example, Harriet Beecher Stowe s antislavery novel Uncle Tom s Cabin and former slave Sojourner Truth s memoir The Narrative of Sojourner Truth both increased opposition to slavery just prior to the Civil War. Meanwhile, other women took a hands-on approach to helping slaves, opening their homes to those escaping from the South to the North both before and during the war. Former slave Harriet Tubman created a network of such safe houses called the Underground Railroad that helped hundreds of slaves escape to freedom. Tubman also encouraged over eight hundred slaves in South Carolina to fight for or escape to freedom, and she did some spying for the Union as well. Female spies served both the North and the South during the Civil War. Among the most prominent were Confederate spies Belle Boyd and Rose O Neal Greenhow and Union spy Elizabeth Van Lew. Pauline Cushman, an actress in Nashville, Tennessee, also spied for the North until she was captured, tried for treason, and sentenced to hang in She was rescued before her execution by invading Union soldiers. In addition to participating in covert activities, women also fought the enemy openly. At least 750 women were involved in battlefield conflicts. A few women found themselves in the thick of combat after becoming daughters of the regiment. For example, Kady Brownell carried the U.S. flag into battle for her husband s military unit, the Fifth Rhode Island Infantry. Bridget Devens became

5 305 WOMEN, CONTRIBUTIONS OF known as Michigan Bridget for serving as flagbearer for the First Michigan Cavalry, in which her husband was a private. Most women who wanted to fight, however, disguised themselves as male soldiers or sailors, since neither the Union nor the Confederacy allowed women to enlist in the military. By some estimates, there were approximately four hundred disguised women, although only about one hundred cases have been documented. One such case was an unidentified woman who was discovered in male clothing among the dead at Gettysburg in July Another female soldier whose gender was discovered after her death was Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, who enlisted in the U.S. Army disguised as a man and served with the 153rd New York Regiment. The woman with the most documented period of service, though, was Jennie Hodgers, a young Irishwoman who spent three years with the Ninety-fifth Illinois Infantry Regiment as Albert Cashier. Hodgers was able to conceal her identity for so long because she never needed medical care. As a result, she was able to fight in approximately forty battles and campaigns, including the Vicksburg Campaign. (The name Albert Cashier appears on a Civil War monument there.) After the war, Hodgers continued to masquerade as a man, working as a farmhand in Illinois, until a doctor discovered her true gender while treating her for a broken leg in Some female soldiers did not continue their deceptions after the war, however, instead deciding to share their experiences in writing. Among these was Sarah Emma Edmonds, who enlisted in 1861 as a male nurse under the name Franklin Thompson but a year later became a spy for the Union. More commonly, though, women writers told about more ordinary wartime experiences. For example, Mary Boykin Chesnut, a Southern officer s wife, wrote about what she saw in military camps and the Confederate capital, and abolitionist Fanny Kemble, author of Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation (1863), shared her experiences as a Southern plantation owner s wife. Other women writers produced patriotic articles and editorials for newspapers and magazines during the war. Of these, among the most prominent was Mary Abigail Dodge, who wrote under the pen name Gail Hamilton. In her 1863 Atlantic Monthly article A Call to My Country, she exhorted Northern women to support their soldiers efforts in order to keep the men s morale high. After the war, women continued to write articles and books about their war-related experiences and views. For example, in 1868 Mary Todd Lincoln s former seamstress, Elizabeth Keckley, published Behind the Scenes, or Thirty Years a Slave and Four in the White House, in which she told what it was like to work for the Lincolns during the war. In 1887, Mary Livermore published My Story of the War: A Woman s Narrative to share her experiences working with relief agencies to deliver supplies to soldiers on the front lines and to improve living conditions in military camps and hospitals. Livermore remained politically active after the war, as did many other women who were involved in political activism during the Civil War. For example, Sojourner Truth participated in postwar programs that helped former slaves find places to live and later joined efforts to gain women the right to vote. Harriet Tubman and many other prominent Civil War activists also became involved in the woman s suffrage movement, as well as efforts to improve the lives of emancipated slaves. See also Barton, Clarissa (Clara) Harlowe; Bickerdyke, Mary Ann; Boyd, Belle; Chesnut, Mary Boykin; Greenhow, Rose O Neal; Livermore, Mary; Stowe, Harriet (Elizabeth) Beecher; Truth, Sojourner; Tubman, Harriet; Van Lew, Elizabeth; Walker, Mary Edwards.