L4+Pelletier+Jennifer

COLLEGE OF EDUCATION, HEALTH AND REHABILITATION LESSON PLAN FORMAT**
 * UNIVERSITY OF MAINE AT FARMINGTON

Lesson 4:** Assume the role of someone from the Civil War Era (ex. soldier, president, citizen, specific person, woman).
 * Teacher’s Name:** **Ms. Pelletier
 * Grade Level:** **10 Topic:** Civil War [Differing Opinions]

__**Objectives**__

 * Student will understand that** the North and the South had differing opinions about themselves and each other.
 * Student will know** about the Confederates vs. the Union, Yeoman farmers, women in the workforce, election of 1856, the Mexican War, the Know-Nothings, Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, Carpet Baggers, Daniel Webster, Ulysses S. Grant, other important generals, leaders, and people.
 * Student will be able to** assume the role of someone from the Civil War Era (ex. soldier, president, citizen, specific person, woman). Product: Garage Band

__**Maine Learning Results Alignment**__
Maine Learning Results: Social Studies - E. History E1. Historical Knowledge, Concepts, Themes, and Patterns Grade 10 - **Diploma** Civil War and Reconstruction, 1850 - 1877 Students understand major eras, major enduring themes, and historic influences in United States and world history, including the roots of democratic philosophy, ideals, and institutions in the world. b. Analyze and critique major historical eras, major enduring themes, turning points, events, consequences, and people in the history of the United States and world and the implications for the present and future.

Students will better be able to understand what the Civil War was about and why it happened by assuming the character of someone who lived through the war. Students will examine major enduring themes and historic influences, including the conflict between the North and the South. Specific people may be studied, as well as more general characters; some examples of the role students could assume might include Abraham Lincoln, a woman, a soldier, Robert E. Lee, and Andrew Jackson. Major people that lived during the Civil War Era will be examined.
 * Rationale:**

__**Assessment**__

 * Formative (Assessment for Learning)**

Students will read over their script and decide if the role they chose is still something they are interested in and if the initial information is accurate during a student-led conference.

Pre-Assessment and Self-Assessment: Students will self-assess themselves using a KWL chart, starting with what they already know about the character they have chosen. During their research, they will continue with this graphic organizer as they evaluate their prior knowledge, using the resources provided.


 * Summative (Assessment of Learning)**

Students will be able to assume the role of someone from the Civil War Era (ex. soldier, president, citizen, specific person, woman). Students will use GarageBand to interview their character about the many aspects of that character's life, including where the character was from, what their home life was like, and what role their character played in accordance with the Civil War.

__**Integration**__
1. Technology - students will use GarageBand to capture what an interview with someone from the Civil War Era would be like. Students will use the GarageBand technology as a way to make their own radio stations. In the same partners that they use during the student-led conference, which will be their Autumn partners, students will help each other to complete their interviews. Together, the pairs will use GarageBand to interview one another in turn, adding in other radio station features, such as appropriate commercials and music.

2. This lesson also relates to English, because students are responsible for writing their own scripts. These scripts should be accurate in content and free of grammatical errors.

__Groupings__
Students will use the Ideal Wheel graphic organizer as a tool as they complete a Think-Pair-Share. Students will write down up to four characters they are interested in and jot down just a few notes on each. Then, when the teacher says to, students will get into pairs. The pairs will be determined by the teacher using Peace Partners. Students will meet with their Peace partners for this activity. In pairs, students will discuss which four roles they are interested in. First, students will decide which partner will talk first. Then that partner will explain which roles they are interested in and why for three minutes. After three minutes, the teacher will say to switch and the other partner will explain the roles he or she is interested in. If there is an uneven amount of students, resulting in a triple partnership, then I will give an additional three minutes before the partners come together as one group. The rest of the class will take the extra three minutes to chose one character that they are not interested in and explain to each other why that is.

For creating the GarageBand product itself, students will get into the same partners that they use during the student-led conference, which will be their Autumn partners, students will help each other to complete their interviews. Together, the pairs will use GarageBand to interview one another in turn, adding in other radio station features, such as appropriate commercials and music.

__**Differentiated Instruction**__

 * Strategies**


 * Verbal:** The product will be an oral interview on Garage Band.
 * Logical:** The final product must include all of the information, but must also be presented in a logical sequence because it is a conversation.
 * Kinesthetic:** Students will move around during the Think-Pair-Share activity.
 * Naturalist:** Students are encourage to describe where their character is from and other details involving scenery and home life.
 * Intrapersonal:** Students will work alone when the first read aloud their script.
 * Interpersonal:** Students will work with a partner and a group during the Think-Pair-Share activity and possibly work with a partner on their final product.
 * Musical:** Students can add music clips to their interview on GarageBand.


 * Modifications/Accommodations**


 * (** //I will review student’s IEP, 504 or ELLIDEP and make appropriate modifications and accommodations.//**)**

If a student misses the first day, which will be spent introducing GarageBand if it has not yet been introduced, completing the Think-Pair-Share, and beginning the scripts, the teacher will introduce the project to the student, and give him or her any tutorials or links to tutorials for GarageBand. The student will also be given the rubrics and all the information the other students got on day one about the actual content. Then the student and the teacher will take five minutes to figure out when the student thinks he or she can complete the project and come to a mutual agreement on the amount of time. The other students can be working on their projects at this time.

If a student misses the second day, which will be spent completing the revisions and summative assessments, the student should come to the teacher before class. The student may or may not already know about the project, depending on whether the student also missed the first day or not. If the student missed only the second day, then the student should already have a rubric and know what is required of him or her. The student will receive the information about the summative assessments. Also, the teacher and the student will have to decide what to do about the actual product, since students are supposed to work with a partner. If their is no available partner, the student may chose to complete the project alone or to join other students, making a team of three. Everyone in the group would have to agree with this, as would the teacher. The student and the teacher would also have to decide on an appropriate time limit.

If a student misses both days, then the student should receive all of the above information and have a ten to fifteen minute conference with the teacher about when the project can be completed and any individual modifications. This should be done outside of class, preferably before class the day the student comes back to school.

Day three will be spent finishing up and presenting. The first half of the class will be spent finishing up the interviews and beginning the extensions. The second part of class will be taken presenting the GarageBand interviews. If a student misses this day, then he or she will have to present their work to me outside of class. Also, the student and his or her partner will need to decide how the project can best be completed and then negotiate that time extension with the teacher.

If a student misses Day four, he or she will have to see the teacher before class. Extensions and presentations are due that day. The student will have to present the project to the teacher after school or at some other teacher-approved time. The teacher and the student will discuss how the time constraint will be handled individually.


 * Extensions**

Students will blog about how difficult it is to assume the role of someone else. Students will explain what it was like as a person from the Civil War Era. Students will describe 3 differences and 3 similarities between themselves and the character they chose. This can be anything, including where the person is from, how they dress, or what they do for a living.

__**Materials, Resources and Technology**__
mac computers with internet access pens pencils paper content information erasers GarageBand program Ideal Wheel graphic organizer KWL charts seasonal partner sheets

__Source for Lesson Plan and Research__
Note: If a student wants to research a particular person not mentioned here, then that student must research internet sites or books that are approved by the teacher. The student may use Google as a search engine or may get a special pass to the library. The student may work after school with the teacher to get more information on their character and to get internet site approval.


 * **Election of 1856:** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1856
 * **James Buchanan:** http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/jamesbuchanan/
 * **Andrew Jackson:** http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/andrewjackson/
 * **Abraham Lincoln:** http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/abrahamlincoln/
 * **Andrew Johnson:** http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/andrewjohnson/
 * **Daniel Webster**: http://www.marshfield.net/History/webster.htm
 * **Ulysses S. Grant:** http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/UlyssesSGrant/
 * **Soldiers (at least 7 options):** http://lcweb4.loc.gov/learn/features/timeline/civilwar/soldiers/soldiers.html
 * **Rachael Jackson, wife of President Andrew Jackson:** http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/first_ladies/racheljackson/
 * **Mary Lincoln:** http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/first_ladies/marylincoln/
 * **Harriet Beecher Stowe:** http://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/life/
 * **Harriet Tubman:** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Tubman
 * **Clara Barton:** http://www.civilwarhome.com/bartonbio.htm
 * **Clara Barton 2:** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Barton
 * **Women as soldiers:** http://americancivilwar.com/women/index.html


 * GarageBand Help:**
 * **How to record audio on GarageBand:** http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9FbczYjfbw
 * **Musical Typing (very helpful):** http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWHVdpgxSac
 * **Cut and Paste:** http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ddi57H1hBE&NR=1
 * **Tutorial 1: Just the Interface:** http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpUUKJeP7jE
 * **Podcast, but also better at explaining, though a little...inappropriate for students? (Mentions Trans-sexuals, but not in a rude way)**: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjtXJHylvic
 * **Help with GarageBand Preferences:** http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZL_oPNj5yY&feature=related
 * **Help with System Preferences while using GarageBand - also, RECORDING SOMETHING (really helpful for whole process of making an interview using GarageBand) Also includes adding music:** http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njBjLU2iudw&feature=related
 * **Next segment of the one above, very helpful:** http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60sVAWVcnCo&feature=related
 * **Cutting and Editing:** http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4JboJTmBOE&feature=related
 * **Changing the Pitch - high pitched voices and deep voices:** http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxw-h-9uWsU&feature=related
 * **Adding Graphics:** http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmJmPicJBT8&feature=related
 * **Continuing to Add Graphics:** http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2C8CYeCvfo&feature=related
 * **Alternative Tutorial:** http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V44RvS2zkuU&feature=related

__**Maine Standards for Initial Teacher Certification and Rationale**__
Rationale:**
 * //Standard 3 - a knowledge of the diverse ways in which students learn and develop by providing learning opportunities that support their intellectual, physical, emotional, social, and cultural development.//


 * Beach Ball:** The teachers uses a variety of resources. Students choose which character or role to portray. During this lesson, things are always up and changing and moving around. Students also have the opportunity to choose a person on their own, as long as the person and any corresponding resources are approved by the teacher.


 * Clipboard:** This lesson is very detailed and clear about what students are supposed to be doing at one time. Although there is personal choice, there is also a great deal of organization and structure. Students have a variety of resources, such as a KWL chart and an Ideal Wheel, to organize their thoughts.


 * Microscope:** Students have the opportunity for extra help and resources after school. They may use other resources, as long as they are approved by the teacher. Students are encouraged to delve deeply into their character to really portray the character as he or she really was. During the Think-Pair-Share, there is also plenty of time for discussion and decision making.


 * Puppy:** This lesson encourages students to communicate with their peers before making a final decision on their role as someone from the Civil War, ensuring security in that role. Because students helped to chose their seasonal partners, the groupings should be comfortable and supportive. Students have many opportunities for reassurance and support from the teacher, including after school. There will also be a tutorial for helping students who get stuck using GarageBand.

Rationale:**
 * //Standard 4 - Plans instruction based upon knowledge of subject matter, students, curriculum goals, and learning and development theory.//

Students will understand that the North and the South had differing opinions about themselves and each other. Students will be able to assume the role of someone from the Civil War Era (ex. soldier, president, citizen, specific person, woman), using GarageBand. Students will understand what it is like to be someone else and how it was living during the Civil War Era. Students will better understand the hardships and way of life in the United States during a time of war, which may be comparable to our current crises in Iraq, as well as the joys and tribulations of everyday life as a citizen (or non-citizen if the student chose, for example, a woman), in the United States during the Civil War.

Rationale:**
 * //Standard 5 - Understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies and appropriate technology to meet students’ needs.//


 * Verbal:** The product will be an oral interview on Garage Band.
 * Logical:** The final product must include all of the information, but must also be presented in a logical sequence because it is a conversation.
 * Kinesthetic:** Students will move around during the Think-Pair-Share activity.
 * Naturalist:** Students are encourage to describe where their character is from and other details involving scenery and home life.
 * Intrapersonal:** Students will work alone when the first read aloud their script.
 * Interpersonal:** Students will work with a partner and a group during the Think-Pair-Share activity and possibly work with a partner on their final product.
 * Musical:** Students can add music clips to their interview on GarageBand.

Students will be using GarageBand to capture their interviews, as well as add in any appropriate commercials or music to authenticate the experience of a radio station. IThe teacher has used technology to find appropriate resources for my students' use, as well as a tutorial for GarageBand for students who may get stuck or have difficulty with the program.

Rationale:**
 * //Standard 8 - Understands and uses a variety of formal and informal assessment strategies to evaluate and support the development of the learner.//

Students will complete two formative assessments during this lesson. First, students will read over their script and decide if the role they chose is still something they are interested in and if the initial information is accurate during a student-led conference. Students will self-assess themselves using a KWL chart, starting with what they already know about the character they have chosen. During their research, they will continue with this graphic organizer as they evaluate their prior knowledge, using the resources provided. As a summative assessment, students will be assume the role of someone from the Civil War Era (ex. soldier, president, citizen, specific person, woman). In partners, students will use GarageBand to interview their character about the many aspects of that character's life, including where the character was from, what their home life was like, and what role their character played in accordance with the Civil War.

__Teaching and Learning Sequence__
Hook (provocative questions) - 3 minutes KWL chart - 7 minutes Think-Pair-Share and Ideal Wheel - 36 to 39 minutes (Think - 10, Pair - 6 to 9, Share - 20) GarageBand tutorial (if necessary) - 10 minutes Working on Scripts - 20 minutes
 * Day 1**

Hook (Student Sample) - 8 minutes Working on Scripts - 25 minutes Formative Assessment 1: Student-Led Conference with Peace Partners - Are you happy with the role you chose? - 10 minutes Revision - 35 minutes
 * Day 2**

KWL chart: L section - 10 minutes Working on GarageBand in partners - 65 minutes If students finish recording and editing early, they may begin their homework, (the Extensions), which should not take them more than 30 minutes Homework: Begin Extensions - up to 30 minutes
 * Day 3**

Day 4 Extensions - 20 minutes Presentations - 60 minutes


 * Homework if not finished**: Extensions - no more than 30 minutes, may be done in word

For the first two days, the seating arrangement should be as follows: Desks of four clusters will be placed around the room. This is so that the students can easily work with their Autumn and Peace partners during the activities. The teacher will tell them as they come in to sit with their Autumn partners. The key to keeping optimal vision of everyone, for both the teacher monitoring the students and for the students to monitor the overhead and the teacher, will be that the desks will be parallel to the overhead. Note that most of the desks should be turned at a slight angle to accomodate more students. For the third day, students will be seated the same way or we will go outside or perhaps have a library day, according to the resources available, the time or year, and the class. This will be determined on that specific day. On Day four, students will be seated in a horse-shoe shape. They will sit next to their partners still, if they need to finish their work. On Day one, I will hook my students in with provocative entry questions. My hook is as follows: [Directed to all students] What is your favorite movie? Who is your favorite actor? Why do you think actors act? What is acting? [pretending to be someone else]. What do actors learn in their roles as another person? What do actors need to know about their characters? [Researching who they are, where they are from, what they are like, etc.]. We are going to research characters and interview them. Who do you think these characters will be? That's right. We are going to research and pretend to be someone from the Civil War. We will interview your character in partners using GarageBand. After the hook, students will complete part of a KWL chart. Students will fill out what they already Know and what they need or Want to know. This should be submitted to the teacher, not for a grade, but for pre-assessment purposes as well as for safe keeping in anticipation for day three. On Day two, I will hook my students in with my seven minute student sample about Gus Bowles, a Confederate soldier. Students will understand that the North and the South had differing opinions about themselves and each other. To better understand big ideas, like why people go to war, sometimes people have to assume the role of someone else. //Students understand major eras, major enduring themes, and historic influences in United States and world history, including the roots of democratic philosophy, ideals, and institutions in the world.// **(What)** **(Where)** **(Why)** **(Hook) (Tailor) Verbal, Logical**

Students will use the Ideal Wheel graphic organizer as a tool as they complete a Think-Pair-Share. Students will write down up to four characters they are interested in and jot down just a few notes on each. Then, when the teacher says to, students will get into pairs. The pairs will be determined by the teacher using Peace Partners. Students will meet with their Peace partners for this activity. In pairs, students will discuss which four roles they are interested in. First, students will decide which partner will talk first. Then that partner will explain which roles they are interested in and why for three minutes. After three minutes, the teacher will say to switch and the other partner will explain the roles he or she is interested in. If there is an uneven amount of students, resulting in a triple partnership, then I will give an additional three minutes before the partners come together as one group. The rest of the class will take the extra three minutes to chose one character that they are not interested in and explain to each other why that is. Students will choose their characters and write their name and character on a piece of paper for the teacher. The teacher will allow two repeats of each character, though students may choose their own character. If students chose to do so, they must get their resources pre-approved by the teacher. Students are encouraged to work after school with the teacher, especially if they need help. When choosing characters, students will pick a number from a hat. The student who pulls number one will get to choose first, the student who pulls number two will get to choose second, etc. Students will know about the Confederates vs. the Union, Yeoman farmers, women in the workforce, election of 1856, the Mexican War, the Know-Nothings, Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, Carpet Baggers, Daniel Webster, Ulysses S. Grant, other important generals, leaders, and people using, among other tactics, an Ideal Wheel during a Think-Pair-Share and a KWL chart. **(Equip)** **(Explore)** **(Experience) (Tailor) Verbal, Kinesthetic, Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, Logical**.

On Day three, students may be able to go to the library or go outside to work and record their GarageBand interviews. This will depend on the time of year, class, weather, and resources available. Students will read over their script and decide if the character they chose is still something they are interested in and if the initial information is accurate during a student-led conference. Students will revise their script by reading it out loud by themselves and then to a partner. Students will make final revisions to their script and make sure that product on Garage Band sounds right. If necessary, I will show the students a brief tutorial about GarageBand. All of links to the tutorials above will be accessible to students on the class wiki. Students will then begin working on their scripts on their own. They may ask questions when needed. Questions should first be directed toward their Autumn partner, with whom they will work for the GarageBand interview, and then, if there is still confusion, to the teacher. With day two comes the first formative assessment, which is a student-led conference. This gives students a chance to make sure they like what they have chosen and to make any revisions. After any necessary revision, students will then begin the actual recording on GarageBand with their Autumn partners. Students are encouraged to come after school after this day also to work on their projects. **(Refine)** **(Rethink)** **(Revise) (Tailor) Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, Musical, Kinesthetic, Verbal, Naturalistic, Logical**

Students will self-assess by completing the "L" part of their KWL charts. The other two sections, what students already know and what they want or need to learn, should have been filled out earlier. Then, students will blog about how difficult it was to assume the role of someone else.These extensions may be given as homework. They will, however, be given 20 minutes in class on Day four to complete the extensions. Students who do not have internet access should write it out in word and then copy and paste into blogger the next morning. The last 60 minutes of class on the third day will be sharing what we have all learned. Students should write down one interesting fact from each presentation, which may be used as a bonus question on a test or project later in the year. The teacher will review the KWL Charts and the one interesting fact and decide at that point whether or not to move on to the next lesson. There may need to be clarifying questions at the beginning of the next day, depending on the class. This will be determined on a class-to-class basis. **(Evaluate) (Tailor) Verbal, Logical, Intrapersonal**


 * Content Notes**


 * Election of 1856**

The **United States presidential election of 1856** was unusually heated. Republican candidate [|John Fremont] condemned the [|Kansas-Nebraska Act], and crusaded against the [|Slave Power] and the expansion of slavery, while Democrat [|James Buchanan] warned that the Republicans were extremists whose victory would lead to civil war. The Democrats endorsed the moderate “popular sovereignty” approach to slavery expansion utilized in the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Former President [|Millard Fillmore] represented a third party, the relatively new [|American Party or “Know-Nothings”]. The Know Nothings, who ignored the slavery issue in favor of anti-immigration policies, won a little over a fifth of the vote. The incumbent President, [|Franklin Pierce], was defeated in his effort to be renominated by the Democrats (their official party slogan that year was "Anybody but Pierce"), who instead selected [|James Buchanan] of Pennsylvania; this was thanks in part to the fact that the Kansas-Nebraska Act divided Democrats. The [|Whig Party] had disintegrated over the issue of slavery, and new organizations such as the Republican Party and the American Party competed to replace them. The Republicans nominated [|John Frémont] of [|California] as their first standard bearer, over Senator [|William H. Seward], and the Know-Nothings nominated former President [|Millard Fillmore] of [|New York]. Perennial candidate [|Daniel Pratt] also ran. Frémont received fewer than 600 votes from [|slave states]—those all coming from Delaware and Maryland. The electoral college results indicated, however, that the Republicans could likely win the next election in 1860 by winning just two more states—such as Pennsylvania and Illinois.



1856 Know-Nothing campaign poster The American Party was the successor to the earlier Native American Party and was controlled by Know-Nothing leaders. The American Party absorbed most of the former Whig Party in 1854, and by 1855 it had established itself as the chief opposition party to the Democrats. In the 82 races for U.S. House in 1855, the American Party ran 76 candidates, 35 of whom won. None of the six Independents or Whigs who ran in these races was elected. The party then succeeded in electing [|Nathaniel P. Banks] the Speaker of the House in the 34th Congress. The American National Convention was held in National Hall in [|Philadelphia], [|Pennsylvania] on February 22-25, 1856. Following the decision by party leaders in 1855 not to press the slavery issue, the convention had to decide how to deal with the Ohio Party, which was vocally anti-slavery. The convention closed the Ohio chapter and re-opened it under more moderate leadership. The more vigorous anti-slavery delegates bolted. Former President [|Millard Fillmore] was nominated for President with 179 votes out of the 234 votes. The convention chose [|Andrew J. Donelson] of [|Tennessee] for vice president with 181 votes to 30 scattering and 24 abstaining.

The [|Democratic Party] was wounded from its devastating losses in the 1854-1855 midterm elections. U.S. Senator [|Stephen A. Douglas] of Illinois, who had sponsored the Kansas-Nebraska Act, entered the race in opposition to President [|Franklin Pierce]. The Pennsylvania delegation continued to sponsor its favorite son, [|James Buchanan]. The 7th Democratic National Convention was held in Smith and Nixon's Hall in Cincinnati OH on 6/2-6/1856. The delegates were deeply divided over slavery. For the first time in American history, a man who had been elected President was denied re-nomination. On the first ballot, Buchanan placed first with 135.5 votes to 122.5 for Pierce, 33 for Douglas, and 5 for [|Lewis Cass]. With each succeeding ballot, Douglas gained at Pierce's expense. On the 15th ballot, most of Pierce's delegates shifted to Douglas in an attempt to stop Buchanan. It was too late, and on the 17th ballot, Buchanan was unanimously nominated. [|John C. Breckinridge] of [|Kentucky] was nominated for vice president.

[[|edit]] Campaign
Caricature of Democratic Platform


 * JAMES BUCHANAN**

1857-1861 Tall, stately, stiffly formal in the high stock he wore around his jowls, James Buchanan was the only President who never married. Presiding over a rapidly dividing Nation, Buchanan grasped inadequately the political realities of the time. Relying on constitutional doctrines to close the widening rift over slavery, he failed to understand that the North would not accept constitutional arguments which favored the South. Nor could he realize how sectionalism had realigned political parties: the Democrats split; the Whigs were destroyed, giving rise to the Republicans. Born into a well-to-do Pennsylvania family in 1791, Buchanan, a graduate of Dickinson College, was gifted as a debater and learned in the law. He was elected five times to the House of Representatives; then, after an interlude as Minister to Russia, served for a decade in the Senate. He became Polk's Secretary of State and Pierce's Minister to Great Britain. Service abroad helped to bring him the Democratic nomination in 1856 because it had exempted him from involvement in bitter domestic controversies. As President-elect, Buchanan thought the crisis would disappear if he maintained a sectional balance in his appointments and could persuade the people to accept constitutional law as the Supreme Court interpreted it. The Court was considering the legality of restricting slavery in the territories, and two justices hinted to Buchanan what the decision would be. Thus, in his Inaugural the President referred to the territorial question as "happily, a matter of but little practical importance" since the Supreme Court was about to settle it "speedily and finally." Two days later Chief Justice Roger B. Taney delivered the Dred Scott decision, asserting that Congress had no constitutional power to deprive persons of their property rights in slaves in the territories. Southerners were delighted, but the decision created a furor in the North. Buchanan decided to end the troubles in Kansas by urging the admission of the territory as a slave state. Although he directed his Presidential authority to this goal, he further angered the Republicans and alienated members of his own party. Kansas remained a territory. When Republicans won a plurality in the House in 1858, every significant bill they passed fell before southern votes in the Senate or a Presidential veto. The Federal Government reached a stalemate. Sectional strife rose to such a pitch in 1860 that the Democratic Party split into northern and southern wings, each nominating its own candidate for the Presidency. Consequently, when the Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln, it was a foregone conclusion that he would be elected even though his name appeared on no southern ballot. Rather than accept a Republican administration, the southern "fire-eaters" advocated secession. President Buchanan, dismayed and hesitant, denied the legal right of states to secede but held that the Federal Government legally could not prevent them. He hoped for compromise, but secessionist leaders did not want compromise. Then Buchanan took a more militant tack. As several Cabinet members resigned, he appointed northerners, and sent the Star of the West to carry reinforcements to Fort Sumter. On January 9, 1861, the vessel was far away. Buchanan reverted to a policy of inactivity that continued until he left office. In March 1861 he retired to his Pennsylvania home Wheatland--where he died seven years later--leaving his successor to resolve the frightful issue facing the Nation.

ANDREW JACKSON 1829-1837
More nearly than any of his predecessors, Andrew Jackson was elected by popular vote; as President he sought to act as the direct representative of the common man. Born in a backwoods settlement in the Carolinas in 1767, he received sporadic education. But in his late teens he read law for about two years, and he became an outstanding young lawyer in Tennessee. Fiercely jealous of his honor, he engaged in brawls, and in a duel killed a man who cast an unjustified slur on his wife Rachel. Jackson prospered sufficiently to buy slaves and to build a mansion, the Hermitage, near Nashville. He was the first man elected from Tennessee to the House of Representatives, and he served briefly in the Senate. A major general in the War of 1812, Jackson became a national hero when he defeated the British at New Orleans. In 1824 some state political factions rallied around Jackson; by 1828 enough had joined "Old Hickory" to win numerous state elections and control of the Federal administration in Washington. In his first Annual Message to Congress, Jackson recommended eliminating the Electoral College. He also tried to democratize Federal officeholding. Already state machines were being built on patronage, and a New York Senator openly proclaimed "that to the victors belong the spoils. . . . " Jackson took a milder view. Decrying officeholders who seemed to enjoy life tenure, he believed Government duties could be "so plain and simple" that offices should rotate among deserving applicants. As national politics polarized around Jackson and his opposition, two parties grew out of the old Republican Party--the Democratic Republicans, or Democrats, adhering to Jackson; and the National Republicans, or Whigs, opposing him. Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and other Whig leaders proclaimed themselves defenders of popular liberties against the usurpation of Jackson. Hostile cartoonists portrayed him as King Andrew I. Behind their accusations lay the fact that Jackson, unlike previous Presidents, did not defer to Congress in policy-making but used his power of the veto and his party leadership to assume command. The greatest party battle centered around the Second Bank of the United States, a private corporation but virtually a Government-sponsored monopoly. When Jackson appeared hostile toward it, the Bank threw its power against him. Clay and Webster, who had acted as attorneys for the Bank, led the fight for its recharter in Congress. "The bank," Jackson told Martin Van Buren, "is trying to kill me, but I will kill it!" Jackson, in vetoing the recharter bill, charged the Bank with undue economic privilege. His views won approval from the American electorate; in 1832 he polled more than 56 percent of the popular vote and almost five times as many electoral votes as Clay. Jackson met head-on the challenge of John C. Calhoun, leader of forces trying to rid themselves of a high protective tariff. When South Carolina undertook to nullify the tariff, Jackson ordered armed forces to Charleston and privately threatened to hang Calhoun. Violence seemed imminent until Clay negotiated a compromise: tariffs were lowered and South Carolina dropped nullification. In January of 1832, while the President was dining with friends at the White House, someone whispered to him that the Senate had rejected the nomination of Martin Van Buren as Minister to England. Jackson jumped to his feet and exclaimed, "By the Eternal! I'll smash them!" So he did. His favorite, Van Buren, became Vice President, and succeeded to the Presidency when "Old Hickory" retired to the Hermitage, where he died in June 1845.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 1861-1865
Lincoln warned the South in his Inaugural Address: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you.... You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it." Lincoln thought secession illegal, and was willing to use force to defend Federal law and the Union. When Confederate batteries fired on Fort Sumter and forced its surrender, he called on the states for 75,000 volunteers. Four more slave states joined the Confederacy but four remained within the Union. The Civil War had begun. The son of a Kentucky frontiersman, Lincoln had to struggle for a living and for learning. Five months before receiving his party's nomination for President, he sketched his life: "I was born Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families--second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks.... My father ... removed from Kentucky to ... Indiana, in my eighth year.... It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up.... Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher ... but that was all." Lincoln made extraordinary efforts to attain knowledge while working on a farm, splitting rails for fences, and keeping store at New Salem, Illinois. He was a captain in the Black Hawk War, spent eight years in the Illinois legislature, and rode the circuit of courts for many years. His law partner said of him, "His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest." He married Mary Todd, and they had four boys, only one of whom lived to maturity. In 1858 Lincoln ran against Stephen A. Douglas for Senator. He lost the election, but in debating with Douglas he gained a national reputation that won him the Republican nomination for President in 1860. As President, he built the Republican Party into a strong national organization. Further, he rallied most of the northern Democrats to the Union cause. On January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy. Lincoln never let the world forget that the Civil War involved an even larger issue. This he stated most movingly in dedicating the military cemetery at Gettysburg: "that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Lincoln won re-election in 1864, as Union military triumphs heralded an end to the war. In his planning for peace, the President was flexible and generous, encouraging Southerners to lay down their arms and join speedily in reunion. The spirit that guided him was clearly that of his Second Inaugural Address, now inscribed on one wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C.: "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds.... " On Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theatre in Washington by John Wilkes Booth, an actor, who somehow thought he was helping the South. The opposite was the result, for with Lincoln's death, the possibility of peace with magnanimity died.

ANDREW JOHNSON 1865-1869
With the Assassination of Lincoln, the Presidency fell upon an old-fashioned southern Jacksonian Democrat of pronounced states' rights views. Although an honest and honorable man, Andrew Johnson was one of the most unfortunate of Presidents. Arrayed against him were the Radical Republicans in Congress, brilliantly led and ruthless in their tactics. Johnson was no match for them. Born in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1808, Johnson grew up in poverty. He was apprenticed to a tailor as a boy, but ran away. He opened a tailor shop in Greeneville, Tennessee, married Eliza McCardle, and participated in debates at the local academy. Entering politics, he became an adept stump speaker, championing the common man and vilifying the plantation aristocracy. As a Member of the House of Representatives and the Senate in the 1840's and '50's, he advocated a homestead bill to provide a free farm for the poor man. During the secession crisis, Johnson remained in the Senate even when Tennessee seceded, which made him a hero in the North and a traitor in the eyes of most Southerners. In 1862 President Lincoln appointed him Military Governor of Tennessee, and Johnson used the state as a laboratory for reconstruction. In 1864 the Republicans, contending that their National Union Party was for all loyal men, nominated Johnson, a Southerner and a Democrat, for Vice President. After Lincoln's death, President Johnson proceeded to reconstruct the former Confederate States while Congress was not in session in 1865. He pardoned all who would take an oath of allegiance, but required leaders and men of wealth to obtain special Presidential pardons. By the time Congress met in December 1865, most southern states were reconstructed, slavery was being abolished, but "black codes" to regulate the freedmen were beginning to appear. Radical Republicans in Congress moved vigorously to change Johnson's program. They gained the support of northerners who were dismayed to see Southerners keeping many prewar leaders and imposing many prewar restrictions upon Negroes. The Radicals' first step was to refuse to seat any Senator or Representative from the old Confederacy. Next they passed measures dealing with the former slaves. Johnson vetoed the legislation. The Radicals mustered enough votes in Congress to pass legislation over his veto--the first time that Congress had overridden a President on an important bill. They passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which established Negroes as American citizens and forbade discrimination against them. A few months later Congress submitted to the states the Fourteenth Amendment, which specified that no state should "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." All the former Confederate States except Tennessee refused to ratify the amendment; further, there were two bloody race riots in the South. Speaking in the Middle West, Johnson faced hostile audiences. The Radical Republicans won an overwhelming victory in Congressional elections that fall. In March 1867, the Radicals effected their own plan of Reconstruction, again placing southern states under military rule. They passed laws placing restrictions upon the President. When Johnson allegedly violated one of these, the Tenure of Office Act, by dismissing Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, the House voted eleven articles of impeachment against him. He was tried by the Senate in the spring of 1868 and acquitted by one vote. In 1875, Tennessee returned Johnson to the Senate. He died a few months later.

Daniel Webster Daniel Webster, b. Salisbury, N.H., Jan. 18, 1782, d. Oct. 24, 1852, statesman, lawyer, and orator, was his era's foremost advocate of American nationalism. A farmer's son, he graduated from Dartmouth College in 1801. After a legal apprenticeship, Webster opened a legal practice in Portsmouth, N.H., in 1807.

Rising quickly as a lawyer and Federalist party leader, Webster was elected (1812) to the U.S. House of Representatives because of his opposition to the War of 1812, which had crippled New England's shipping trade. After two more terms in the House, Webster left Congress in 1816 and moved to Boston. Over the next six years, he won major constitutional cases before the Supreme Court (most notably, DARTMOUTH COLLEGE V. WOODWARD, GIBBONS V. OGDEN, and MCCULLOCH V. MARYLAND), establishing himself as the nation's leading lawyer and an outstand outstanding orator. In 1823, Webster was returned to Congress from Boston, and in 1827 he was elected senator from Massachusetts.

New circumstances enabled Webster to become a champion of American nationalism. With the Federalist party dead, he joined the National Republican party, allying himself with Westerner Henry CLAY and endorsing federal aid for roads in the West. In 1828, the dominant economic interests of Massachusetts having shifted from shipping to manufacturing, Webster backed the high-tariff bill of that year. Angry Southern leaders condemned the tariff, and South Carolina's John C. CALHOUN argued that his state had the right to nullify the law. Replying to South Carolina's Robert HAYNE in a Senate debate in 1830, Webster triumphantly defended the Union. His words "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!" won wide acclaim.

Webster and President Andrew Jackson joined forces in 1833 to suppress South Carolina's attempt to nullify the tariff. But Webster and other opponents of Jackson--now known as Whigs (see WHIG PARTY, United States)--battled him on other issues, including his attack on the National Bank. Webster ran for the presidency in 1836 as one of three Whig party candidates but carried only Massachusetts. For the remainder of his career he aspired vainly to the presidency.

In 1841, President William Henry Harrison named Webster secretary of state. The death of Harrison (April 1841) brought John Tyler to the presidency, and in September 1841 all the Whigs but Webster resigned from the cabinet. Webster remained to settle a dispute with Great Britain involving the Maine-Canada boundary and successfully concluded the WEBSTER-ASHBURTON TREATY (1842). Whig pressure finally induced Webster to leave the cabinet in May 1843.

The annexation of Texas in 1845 and the resulting war with Mexico, both opposed by Webster, forced the country to face the issue of the expansion of slavery. Webster opposed such expansion but feared even more a dissolution of the Union over the dispute. In a powerful speech before the Senate on Mar. 7, 1850, he supported the COMPROMISE OF 1850, denouncing Southern threats of secession but urging Northern support for a stronger law for the recovery of fugitive slaves. Webster was named secretary of state in July 1850 by President Millard Fillmore and supervised the strict enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act. Webster's stand alienated antislavery forces and divided the Whig party, but it helped to preserve the Union.

ULYSSES S. GRANT 1869-1877
Late in the administration of Andrew Johnson, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant quarreled with the President and aligned himself with the Radical Republicans. He was, as the symbol of Union victory during the Civil War, their logical candidate for President in 1868. When he was elected, the American people hoped for an end to turmoil. Grant provided neither vigor nor reform. Looking to Congress for direction, he seemed bewildered. One visitor to the White House noted "a puzzled pathos, as of a man with a problem before him of which he does not understand the terms." Born in 1822, Grant was the son of an Ohio tanner. He went to West Point rather against his will and graduated in the middle of his class. In the Mexican War he fought under Gen. Zachary Taylor. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Grant was working in his father's leather store in Galena, Illinois. He was appointed by the Governor to command an unruly volunteer regiment. Grant whipped it into shape and by September 1861 he had risen to the rank of brigadier general of volunteers. He sought to win control of the Mississippi Valley. In February 1862 he took Fort Henry and attacked Fort Donelson. When the Confederate commander asked for terms, Grant replied, "No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted." The Confederates surrendered, and President Lincoln promoted Grant to major general of volunteers. At Shiloh in April, Grant fought one of the bloodiest battles in the West and came out less well. President Lincoln fended off demands for his removal by saying, "I can't spare this man--he fights." For his next major objective, Grant maneuvered and fought skillfully to win Vicksburg, the key city on the Mississippi, and thus cut the Confederacy in two. Then he broke the Confederate hold on Chattanooga. Lincoln appointed him General-in-Chief in March 1864. Grant directed Sherman to drive through the South while he himself, with the Army of the Potomac, pinned down Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Finally, on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, Lee surrendered. Grant wrote out magnanimous terms of surrender that would prevent treason trials. As President, Grant presided over the Government much as he had run the Army. Indeed he brought part of his Army staff to the White House. Although a man of scrupulous honesty, Grant as President accepted handsome presents from admirers. Worse, he allowed himself to be seen with two speculators, Jay Gould and James Fisk. When Grant realized their scheme to corner the market in gold, he authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to sell enough gold to wreck their plans, but the speculation had already wrought havoc with business. During his campaign for re-election in 1872, Grant was attacked by Liberal Republican reformers. He called them "narrow-headed men," their eyes so close together that "they can look out of the same gimlet hole without winking." The General's friends in the Republican Party came to be known proudly as "the Old Guard." Grant allowed Radical Reconstruction to run its course in the South, bolstering it at times with military force. After retiring from the Presidency, Grant became a partner in a financial firm, which went bankrupt. About that time he learned that he had cancer of the throat. He started writing his recollections to pay off his debts and provide for his family, racing against death to produce a memoir that ultimately earned nearly $450,000. Soon after completing the last page, in 1885, he died.


 * Soldiers**

It is virtually impossible to measure the human costs of the Civil War, the hardships and suffering it caused. What we do know is that millions of people grieved for the loss of loved ones. In all, around 360,000 Union soldiers died as a direct result of the war. The Confederacy lost 260,000 dead. Many more soldiers were wounded; some wounds maimed their victims for life. The overall number of dead that resulted from the Civil War nearly equals the number of American soldiers killed in every other military action up to the present. The documents listed to the right tell stories of and about soldiers during the Civil War. Several deal with the reasons why young men and boys joined up enthusiastically. Others tell of the experience and suffering of being a prisoner of war. Still others speak about action during the war and provide glimpses into how the Civil War was fought and how the soldiers experienced the war.


 * **Gus Bowles goes to war**

//William A. "Gus" Bowles was 91 years old when the Federal Writer's Project interviewed him. He was a veteran of the Confederate Army during the Civil War and a pioneer settler in Uvalde, Texas. He was born in Mississippi and moved with his family to Texas in 1849. When the Civil War broke out, his father enlisted and went off to war. Why did Gus want to join the fighting? What was military life like from Gus's point of view? What does Gus say about the end of the war?// View the [|entire interview] with Gus Bowles from [|American Life Histories, 1936-1940]. Use your browser's Back Button to return to this point.

"When the Civil War broke out, my father went to fight. He bought a little place out of Belton and moved us into the country. It was land for cultivation and as I was about 13 years old, it was up to me to keep things going. My father had been gone a long time when some Confederate soldiers camped near our place one day. They had stopped to eat dinner and I went down there where they were to talk to them. They talked about the war til they got me in the notion of going and I went back to the house and told my mother that I was going to the war . She began trying to keep me from going and talking and begging me not to go, but I told her that I would go down to where my father was and I would try to got in the same regiment with him. "He was stationed at Houston on Buffalo Bayou and man in Colonel Gillispie's regiment. I walked sixteen miles to get to a train and went on down to Houston and then I walked on down to camp, about two miles. My father was sure surprised to see me and asked me what I was doing there. I told him I was afraid that the war would break before I got to go. Well, he knew I was too young so he went and talked to the colonel. He introduced me and the colonel said he would like to get me to go back home but if I wouldn't go, I could stay there with my father because he couldn't sign me up on account of my age. My father had been down there for a long time, so he talked to the colonel about letting me stay there in his place while he went home. I could take his place till he got back. The colonel agreed and they gave me a suit of clothes and a gun and he says, 'Now, I'll tell you, you are going to find this pretty hard for you have to go up to Houston and guard prisoners two hours two or three times a week.' I said I could stand that all right. "I was there two or three months and had to go on guard very week, two or three times and I was getting pretty tired of it. We lived on starvation rations. They give us these here old hard-tack crackers and bacon; no coffee. We had to drink water. They couldn't get coffee for the northern people had it all tied up. The only may we could got a cup of coffee was when we would be on guard. Then we'd go to the coffee house where they served coffee and get a cup. "I had never wrote to my father to come back, so I stayed there till we got word that Lee's army had surrendered. When we got word that he had surrendered, our colonel said, 'Well, the war is about over.' One day we heard a cannon firing down at Galveston and the colonel and General Magruder said, 'That's Yankees firing on Galveston now and we've got to get in line of battle and prepare to get 'em when they come.' That was the first time I ever was in line of battle and I could look up and down the line and see the guns glistening in the sun and the generals riding up and down in front of the lines giving orders -- oh my! I wished I was back home then. They thought the Yankees would come on up to Houston on the train. Along in the evening, we were standing there on that prairie and we seen the train coming and heard the whiltle. The officers said, 'Well, they're coming; we'll have to fight them!' We got ready and had our guns all ready to fire. When that train come in sight, you never saw so many men in your life. They were all over it. When they got in sight, [they began?] waving their hats and handkerchiefs and cheering and the officers called to us and said the war was over because that was our men on their way home. We all started home that same evening. Our general told us that since the soldier's were going to take Houston, we might as well go on in and get what we could too. They hit that town and went into every store and took everything they wanted. All of those private stores were looted. So I decided I would go in and get me a big gun."


 * **A Young Girl Meets Her Soldier Father**

//Mrs. I.E. Doane was 81 years old when interviewed by workers of the WPA Federal Writer's Project. One of 11 children, she moved with her parents to the low country of South Carolina. Her father purchased 3000 acres at the fork of the Salkehatchie River. The family was living there when the Civil War began and her father joined the Confederate Army. What does Mrs. Doane say about Yankee soldiers? About Confederate soldiers? How often do you think other Southerners saw their menfolk the way Mrs. Doane and her family did?// View Mrs. Doane's [|entire interview] from [|American Life Histories, 1936-1940]. Use your browser's Back Button to return to this point.

Mrs. Doane says they never even saw any Yankees except for a few stragglers who passed now and then. When Sherman's army was approaching, the Confederates burned the bridge across Salkehatchie River to prevent them crossing, which proved to be most fortunate for the Cummings' family. The river was very high from recent rains and the Yankees were unable to get across. So that, although Sherman's army was so near they could hear them on the other side of the river, this plantation at least escaped the fate which fell to many in this section. Undisturbed by marauding Yankees, the Cummings' were frequently visited by Confederate soldiers. These, ragged and half-starved, passed in hordes, raiding their provisions, killing their chickens, hogs and cattle. Although this was hard, Mrs. Cummings did not begrudge food to these soldiers. Mrs. Doane says she well remembers her mother and "Mudder" baking hoecakes in the kitchen for these hungry soldiers, who were so ravenous that they could not wait for the bread to be browned on both sides, but would snatch it from their hands and eat it half-cooked. She recalls seeing her mother dish up sauer-kraut for the soldiers until they had eaten her entire winter's supply - two barrels. Late one afternoon word came that Confederate soldiers were passing through Salkehatchie, near Yemassee, and that her father was among them. He could not get away to visit his family, but wanted them to meet him at Salkehatchie. It did not take her mother long to make plans. She gave the children their supper, then laid mattresses in the big covered wagon, which was used to haul provisions from Charleston, and put them to bed under the watchful care of "Mudder", who was indeed like a second mother to them. Peter drove the wagon, which was also stocked with food, and Mrs. Cummings, with the baby and her oldest son, drove in the buggy. It was very exciting, Mrs. Doane says, seeing her father and all the Confederate soldiers, but almost as exciting was the experience of camping with the other families who had also come to see soldier husbands and fathers.


 * **Captured During Longstreet's Charge at Gettysburg**

//John H. Robertson was born in Quincy, Florida, in 1845. He served in the Confederate Army and, after the war, settled in Texas. Below is an excerpt from an oral history interview conducted with him by the Federal Writer's Project. What does John say about his experiences as a prisoner of war? What would it be like if you did not hear from or about a close family member for more than two years?// View the [|entire interview] with John Robertson from [|American Life Histories, 1936-1940]. Use your browser's Back Button to return to this point.

" . . . I was a soldier in the Confederate Army and served under Maury's division of the Army of Tennessee. I was captured at the battle of Gettysburg in Longstreet's charge and was taken to Fort Delaware, an island of 90 acres of land where the Union prisoners were kept. We were detailed to work in the fields and our rations was corn bread and pickled beef. However I fared better than some of the prisoners for I was given the privilege of making jewelry for the use of the Union soldiers. I made rings from the buttons from their overcoats and when they were polished the brass made very nice looking rings. These I sold to the soldiers of the Union Army who were our guards and with the money thus obtained I could buy food and clothing. The Union guards kept a commissary and they had a big supply of chocolate. I ate chocolate candy and drank hot chocolate in place of coffee until I have never wanted any chocolate since. "I was in this prison when Lincoln was killed and great was the sorrow among the troops who guarded us when the news came. I made an attempt one time to escape and was captured so did not make another attempt. This was during a storm and in the confusion I tried to roll out of the camp, it came up while we were asleep and I was sleeping in my blanket, but the guard heard me and caught me before I could make my escape. After the end of the conflict I returned home, found that I had been reported missing for two years and had changed so much that my own people did not know me. When I left home I was sixteen and during the period of my absence I had grown and completely changed. Finally my sister identified me by my teeth. During this time I had grown a beard and this alone changed my appearance. "At the end of hostilities I returned to my home and lived there for five years and as so many were seeking their fortune in the state of Texas I left my home in Florida and came to Texas in 1870."


 * **Virginian Robert Carter Recalls the Civil War**

//Robert Carter lived in San Angelo, Texas, when he was interviewed by the Federal Writer's Project. Carter was part of the Virginia Carters and, according to the interviewer, tried to live like a Virginian rather than either a Texan or Westerner. In what ways was the Carter family split by the war? What activities were the Confederate Carters engaged in during the war?// View the [|entire interview] with Robert Carter from [|American Life Histories, 1936-1940]. Use your browser's Back Button to return to this point.

"My uncle, Moe Carter, was an officer in the United States Army and was stationed in Texas before the Civil War, to fight Indians. He was wounded by an arrow and came home to see us in Virginia just before the war started. He would not desert his flag and fought with the Union but was killed at [Murfreesboro?]. "I can remember the battles of [Manassas?] and Bull Run. They were just eight miles apart. McDowell and his soldiers flanked [Beauregard?] near the Henry house. When Cousin Welby Carter saw the Yankees he got on his black horse and rode nine miles to tell General Beauregard that McDowell had flanked him; and the Yankees never knew how the Rebels found out their movements. The battles were fought on twenty-eight acres belonging to the Henry family. The home was demolished and old Mrs. Henry was killed in her bed. My father was four years in Stuart's Cavalry in the Southern Army and surrendered at Appomattox. I remember well that I was a small boy in the backyard playing with the little negroes, when grandmother came to the little porch, called the slaves and told them they were free. 'You may take the things from your cabins with you, she said, 'but the plantation will have to be worked and if you wish to stay, you shall be paid.' Most of the slaves cried but thought if they were free they would have to leave. Every night when the sun would begin to get low and the shadows grow long we would see them slipping back to their cabins. Some who got away would write back, 'Dear Missus, send me money to come home. I want to die on the old plantation.' "My cousins in Washington, where I have visited many times, know John Wilkes Booth, the actor who shot Lincoln. They were his friends. The story that he was a second-rate actor is false. These cousins of mine were attending Ford's Theater the night Lincoln was assassinated and Booth held the audience spellbound. I have never believed Booth was executed. Two of my young boy cousins had a small skiff on the [Potomac?] for pleasure and late one afternoon two men approached them and asked them if they would take a wounded confederate soldier across the river. The boys did but when it became known, they came near getting into very serious trouble. I have a picture of Booth's brother which he gave to my wife. Booth and his brother were handsome men. General Wade Hampton gave me a small mule which I rode. The mule would pitch me off and my slate and batter cakes would all be mashed together. I have seen Virginia burning- homes, barns, fields, woods- set afire by General Burnside."


 * **An Incident, Anything But Amusing**

//Mrs. Ernestine Weiss Faudie was born in Germany but immigrated with her family to Fredericksburg, Texas, in 1853. In her interview with a WPA Federal Writer's Project staff person, she recalled several things about soldiers during the Civil War. What does she say about the hardships and neediness of both soldiers and civilians during the war?// View the [|entire interview] with Mrs. Ernestine Faudie from [|American Life Histories, 1936-1940]. Use your browser's Back Button to return to this point.

" . . . My father had two brothers to come with him from Germany and were in the Confederate army. Their names were August and Fritz Weiss. They were sent back home from the war on a furlough but had to return and August was captured by the Yankees and taken prisioner and made to walk all the way to the prison. He was later exchanged and came home. The other brother Fritz, came home after the war was over and took tubercolosis and died from this which he contracted in the army. "When any of the soldiers on either side came thro our place they took anything they could find, the rebels felt that they had a right to it for they were fighting for us. They took our horses and killed our hogs and cows to eat, and took our corn. When the blockade was on and we could not get coffee we made it out of sweet potatoes. We cut them up and dried them and boiled them and drank this for coffee. "There was a grist mill close by our place and they ground the meal real fine and crushed it and called it flour; anyway we made our light bread out of this ground and crushed corn. We cooked over a fire place with a big dutch oven. We spun and wove the cotton thread to make our clothes. And speaking of the soldiers I remember an incident that is amusing now but at the time, to the neighbor it was anything but amusing. When a group of soldiers passed this neighbors, she tied a hog to the bed post so they would not see it, but they stopped for a drink of water and heard the hog grunting and so came into the room and took the hog and barbecued it, out in the year and ate it before the neighbor's very eyes."


 * **Mr. Johnson Remembers Morgan's Soldiers**

//Mr. Johnson, interviewed near his home in Indiana during the 1930s, was a young man during the Civil War. Even so, his memories concerning John Morgan's cavalry raid through his neighborhood were still fresh in his mind. What major points does Mr. Johnson make about Morgan's soldiers? How would you judge their conduct, considering this was a military action through enemy territory?// View the [|entire interview] with Mr. Johnson from [|American Life Histories, 1936-1940]. Use your browser's Back Button to return to this point.

Mr. Johnson was working at a neighbor's where he was hired whom the rumor came that Morgan and his terrible men were crossing the river at [Corydon?]. There was a general stir of excitement in the community. This was approximately three miles from Lexington on the Paris Crossing road. ". . . The gray figures of Morgan's men appeared out of the distance. They showed the strain of a hurried and harassed march; both men and beast were weary. Four of the men stopped before me perched on the fence and said, 'Son take these canteen and fill them with water'. I didn't refuse but hurried across the road to Mr. Alexander's Robinson's well where two or three other boys were drawing water for the Raider's men with a windlass. The well was wide and only about nine feet deep. As soon as I filled my canteens I passed them among the men and kept returning for more water until the well was dry. After this short period of service we were mustered out; and Morgan, the raider, with his men went their way with their jangling and clanking of arms to disappear in the horizon toward old Paris." There were some three thousand soldiers in the Confederate cavalry. They were gentlemanly and represented the best manhood of Kentucky and their native states. Of course in war and in that large a crowd there would be some unpleasant things, but on the whole the men were polite. Whenever they saw a horse they wanted they exchanged their worn out horse for it usually with the suggestion of "Let's Swap, I think you can plow all right with this horse". Many of the horses left were really better than the ones taken but were worn out and many had sore backs.


 * **Lewis McBride Joins the Union Army**

//In the following excerpt from an interview conducted during the 1930s, Lewis McBride tells stories about several interesting experiences he had as a young man. What does McBride say about his meeting Abraham Lincoln? What do you think about Lewis's joining the Union Army at such a young age? How common do you think that practice might have been?// View L. C. McBride's [|entire interview] from[| American Life Histories, 1936-1940]. Use your browser's Back Button to return to this point.

"We lived in South Bend, Indiana from 1855 to the end of the Civil War. It was there in about 1859 that I got a chance to hear Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas make speeches in a sort of debate. They spoke of LaPorte, Indiana and the railroad ran an excursion, 50 for the round trip from South Bend. "At that time my father was a Democrat and of course, I was too, although only a boy. Mr. Lincoln appeared in a shiny black suit and rusty plug hat. Douglas was a regular dandy in tailor-made well fitting clothes and an elegant plug hat. "I was seated with four other boys on the first row of seats and when the speaking was finished, Mr. Lincoln stepped down from the platform and stopped by us. He said 'I want to shake hands with these boys, they are the ones who will soon take up this great work.' "It made us feel pretty good to be there to see and be seen. I came very near turning Republican that day. "In December 1862 when I was fifteen years old, I enlisted in the Union Army and was in service until August of 1865. We went with Sherman on his march to the sea and I got as far as Atlanta, Ga. Rebel General Hood had crossed the Tennessee river into Tennessee and our division was ordered back to clean them up. In the battle, which followed at Franklin, Tennessee, I was struck in the knee cap by a Minnie ball and for 5 months I lay in a hospital 25 miles south of Nashville. At Murphysboro hospital gangrene had set in and they wanted to amputate my leg but I said I was going where my leg went so they left it on. It finally healed though it has always bothered. When I laid in that hospital I wished I was home with mother. "In the army we were used to a menu of 'sow belly' salt meat and coffee, but in the hospital, we got hard biscuits and tea. "There were four Rebels in there and they used to roast me something fierce. 'What did you'uns come down here to fit wouns for? I can hear them saying it yet. I had always been a Democrat but after that I turned Republican and have been so ever since. These Rebels are Democrats. "I voted for Abraham Lincoln. On August 15, 1865, I was discharged from the army and went out to Marenge, Iowa, where my father had moved."

RACHEL DONELSON JACKSON b.1767 -- d.1828
Wearing the white dress she had purchased for her husband's inaugural ceremonies in March 1829, Rachel Donelson Jackson was buried in the garden at The Hermitage, her home near Nashville, Tennessee, on Christmas Eve in 1828. Lines from her epitaph--"A being so gentle and so virtuous slander might wound, but could not dishonor"--reflected his bitterness at campaign slurs that seemed to precipitate her death. Rachel Donelson was a child of the frontier. Born in Virginia, she journeyed to the Tennessee wilderness with her parents when only 12. At 17, while living in Kentucky, she married Lewis Robards, of a prominent Mercer County family. His unreasoning jealousy made it impossible for her to live with him; in 1790 they separated, and she heard that he was filing a petition for divorce. Andrew Jackson married her in 1791; and after two happy years they learned to their dismay that Robards had not obtained a divorce, only permission to file for one. Now he brought suit on grounds of adultery. After the divorce was granted, the Jacksons quietly remarried in 1794. They had made an honest mistake, as friends well understood, but whispers of adultery and bigamy followed Rachel as Jackson's career advanced in both politics and war. He was quick to take offense at, and ready to avenge, any slight to her. Scandal aside, Rachel's unpretentious kindness won the respect of all who knew her--including innumerable visitors who found a comfortable welcome at The Hermitage. Although the Jacksons never had children of their own, they gladly opened their home to the children of Rachel's many relatives. In 1809 they adopted a nephew and named him Andrew Jackson, Jr. They also reared other nephews; one, Andrew Jackson Donelson, eventually married his cousin Emily, one of Rachel's favorite nieces. When Jackson was elected President, he planned to have young Donelson for private secretary, with Emily as company for Rachel. After losing his beloved wife he asked Emily to serve as his hostess. Though only 21 when she entered the White House, she skillfully cared for her uncle, her husband, four children (three born at the mansion), many visiting relatives, and official guests. Praised by contemporaries for her wonderful tact, she had the courage to differ with the President on issues of principle. Frail throughout her lifetime, Emily died of tuberculosis in 1836. During the last months of the administration, Sarah Yorke Jackson, wife of Andrew Jackson, Jr., presided at the mansion in her stead.

MARY TODD LINCOLN b.1818 -- d.1882
As a girlhood companion remembered her, Mary Todd was vivacious and impulsive, with an interesting personality--but "she now and then could not restrain a witty, sarcastic speech that cut deeper than she intended...." A young lawyer summed her up in 1840: "the very creature of excitement." All of these attributes marked her life, bringing her both happiness and tragedy. Daughter of Eliza Parker and Robert Smith Todd, pioneer settlers of Kentucky, Mary lost her mother before the age of seven. Her father remarried; and Mary remembered her childhood as "desolate" although she belonged to the aristocracy of Lexington, with high-spirited social life and a sound private education. Just 5 feet 2 inches at maturity, Mary had clear blue eyes, long lashes, light-brown hair with glints of bronze, and a lovely complexion. She danced gracefully, she loved finery, and her crisp intelligence polished the wiles of a Southern coquette. Nearly 21, she went to Springfield, Illinois, to live with her sister Mrs. Ninian Edwards. Here she met Abraham Lincoln--in his own words, "a poor nobody then." Three years later, after a stormy courtship and broken engagement, they were married. Though opposites in background and temperament, they were united by an enduring love--by Mary's confidence in her husband's ability and his gentle consideration of her excitable ways. Their years in Springfield brought hard work, a family of boys, and reduced circumstances to the pleasure-loving girl who had never felt responsibility before. Lincoln's single term in Congress, for 1847-1849, gave Mary and the boys a winter in Washington, but scant opportunity for social life. Finally her unwavering faith in her husband won ample justification with his election as President in 1860. Though her position fulfilled her high social ambitions, Mrs. Lincoln's years in the White House mingled misery with triumph. An orgy of spending stirred resentful comment. While the Civil War dragged on, Southerners scorned her as a traitor to her birth, and citizens loyal to the Union suspected her of treason. When she entertained, critics accused her of unpatriotic extravagance. When, utterly distraught, she curtailed her entertaining after her son Willie's death in 1862, they accused her of shirking her social duties. Yet Lincoln, watching her put her guests at ease during a White House reception, could say happily: "My wife is as handsome as when she was a girl, and I...fell in love with her; and what is more, I have never fallen out." Her husband's assassination in 1865 shattered Mary Todd Lincoln. The next 17 years held nothing but sorrow. With her son "Tad" she traveled abroad in search of health, tortured by distorted ideas of her financial situation. After Tad died in 1871, she slipped into a world of illusion where poverty and murder pursued her. A misunderstood and tragic figure, she passed away in 1882 at her sister's home in Springfield--the same house from which she had walked as the bride of Abraham Lincoln, 40 years before.


 * Clara Barton**

1.

Born on December 25, 1821 in Oxford, Mass., the youngest of 5 children in a middle-class family, Barton was educated at home, and at 15 started teaching school. Her most notable antebellum achievement was the establishment of a free public school in Bordentown, N.J. Though she is remembered as the founder of the American Red Cross, her only prewar medical experience came when for 2 years she nursed an invalid brother. In 1861 Barton was living in Washington, D.C., working at the U.S. Patent Office. When the 6th Massachusetts Regiment arrived in the city after the Baltimore Riots, she organized a relief program for the soldiers, beginning a lifetime of philanthropy. When Barton learned that many of the wounded from First Bull Run had suffered, not from want of attention but from need of medical supplies, she advertised for donations in the Worcester, Mass., //Spy// and began an independent organization to distribute goods. The relief operation was successful, and the following year U.S. Surgeon General William A. Hammond granted her a general pass to travel with army ambulances "for the purpose of distributing comforts for the sick and wounded, and nursing them." For 3 years she followed army operations throughout the Virginia theater and in the Charleston, S.C., area. Her work in Fredericksburg, Va., hospitals, caring for the casualties from the Battle of the Wilderness, and nursing work at Bermuda Hundred attracted national notice. At this time she formed her only formal Civil War connection with any organization when she served as superintendent of nurses in Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butlers command. She also expanded her concept of soldier aid, traveling to Camp Parole, Md., to organize a program for locating men listed as missing in action. Through interviews with Federals returning from Southern prisons, she was often able to determine the status of some of the missing and notify families. By the end of the war Barton had performed most of the services that would later he associated with the American Red Cross, which she founded in 1881. In 1904 she resigned as head of that organization, retiring to her home at Glen Echo, outside Washington, D.C., where she died 12 Apr. 1912.

2.

hide] * [|1] [|Youth, education, and family nursing] 
 * Clarissa Harlowe Barton** (December 25, 1821 – April 12, 1912) was a pioneer American [|teacher], [|nurse], and [|humanitarian]. She has been described as having a "strong and independent spirit" and is best remembered for organizing the [|American Red Cross].
 * ==Contents==
 * [|2] [|American Civil War]
 * [|3] [|American Red Cross]
 * [|4] [|Religious beliefs]
 * [|5] [|Clara Barton Birthplace Museum]
 * [|6] [|Clara Barton National Historic Site]
 * [|7] [|See also]
 * [|8] [|Notes]
 * [|9] [|Published Work]
 * [|10] [|References and additional reading]
 * [|11] [|External links] ||

Youth, education, and family nursing
Clara Barton's birthplace, N. Oxford Mass. Clarissa Harlowe Barton was born on Christmas Day, 1821, in [|Oxford, Massachusetts], to Stephen and Sarah Barton. She was the youngest of five children. Clara's father was a farmer and horse breeder, while her mother Sarah managed the household. The two later helped found the first [|Universalist Church] in Oxford. When Clara was eleven, her brother David became her first patient after he fell from a rafter in their unfinished barn. Clara stayed by his side for two years and learned to administer all his medicines, including the "great, loathsome crawling [|leeches]". As she continued to develop an interest in nursing, Clara may have drawn inspiration from stories of her great-aunt, [|Martha Ballard], who served the town of Hallowell (later Augusta), Maine, as a [|midwife] for over three decades. Ballard helped deliver nearly one thousand infants between 1777 and 1812, and in many cases administered medical care in much the same way as a formally trained doctor of her era.[|[1]] On his death bed, Clara's father gave her advice that she would later recall: "//As a patriot, he had me serve my country with all I had, even with my life if need be; as the daughter of an accepted [|Mason], he had me seek and comfort the afflicted everywhere, and as a [|Christian] he charged me to honor God and love mankind.//"

American Civil War
Clara Barton circa 1866. In April 1862, after the [|First Battle of Bull Run], Barton established an agency to obtain and distribute supplies to wounded soldiers. She was given a pass by General William Hammond to ride in army ambulances to provide comfort to the soldiers and nurse them back to health and lobbied the [|U.S. Army] bureaucracy, at first without success, to bring her own medical supplies to the battlefields. Finally, in July 1862, she obtained permission to travel behind the lines, eventually reaching some of the grimmest battlefields of the war and serving during the [|Siege of Petersburg] and [|Richmond, Virginia]. In 1864 she was appointed by Union General [|Benjamin Franklin Butler] (politician) as the "lady in charge" of the hospitals at the front of the [|Army of the James]. In 1865, President Abraham Lincoln placed Barton in charge of the search for the missing men of the Union Army. Around this time, a young soldier named Dorence Atwater came to her door. He had copied the list of the dead without being discovered by the Andersonville officials, and taken it with him through the lines when he was released from the prison. Having been afraid that the names of the dead would never get to the families, it was his intention to publish the list. He did accomplish this. His list of nearly 13,000 men was considered invaluable. When the war ended, Barton and Atwater were sent to Andersonville with 42 headboard carvers, and Barton gave credit to young Dorence for what came to be known as “The Atwater List” in her report of the venture. Dorence also has a report at the beginning of this list, still available through [|Andersonville National Historic Site] in Georgia. Because of the work they did, they became known as the "Angels of Andersonville," according to a biography of Barton. She was also known as "The Angel of the Battlefield".[|[2]] Her work in Andersonville is displayed in the book, //Numbering All the Bones,// by Ann Rinaldi. This experience launched her on a nationwide campaign to identify all soldiers missing during the Civil War. She published lists of names in newspapers and exchanged letters with soldiers’ families. 

American Red Cross
Barton then achieved widespread recognition by delivering lectures around the country about her war experiences. She met [|Susan B. Anthony] and began a long association with the [|suffrage] movement. She also became acquainted with [|Frederick Douglass] and became an activist for black [|civil rights], or an [|abolitionist]. The years of toil during the Civil War and her dedicated work searching for missing soldiers debilitated Barton's health. In 1868, her doctors recommended a restful trip to Europe. In 1870, while she was overseas, she became involved with the [|International Committee of the Red Cross] (ICRC) and its humanitarian work during the [|Franco-Prussian War]. Created in 1864, the ICRC had been chartered to provide humane services to all victims of war under a flag of neutrality. When Clara Barton returned to the United States, she inaugurated a movement to gain recognition for the International Committee of the Red Cross by the United States government. When she began work on this project in 1873, most Americans thought the U.S. would never again face a calamity like the Civil War, but Barton finally succeeded during the administration of President James Garfield, using the argument that the new [|American Red Cross] could respond to crises other than war. As Barton expanded the original concept of the Red Cross to include assisting in any great national disaster, this service brought the United States the "Good Samaritan of Nations" label. Barton naturally became President of the American branch of the society, which was founded on [|May 21], [|1881] in Dansville, N.Y.[|[3]] [|John D. Rockefeller] donated funds to create a national headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennysylvania located one block from the White House. Barton at first dedicated the [|American Red Cross] to performing disaster relief, such as after the [|1893 Sea Islands Hurricane]. This changed with the advent of the [|Spanish-American War] during which it aided refugees and prisoners of war. In 1896, responding to the humanitarian crisis in the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of the [|Hamidian Massacres], Barton sailed to [|Istanbul] and after long negotiations with [|Abdul Hamid II], opened the first American International Red Cross headquarters in the heart of Beijing,China. Barton herself traveled along with five other Red Cross expeditions to the Armenian provinces in the spring of 1896. Barton also worked in hospitals in Cuba in 1898 at the age of seventy-seven.[|[4]] As criticism arose of her management of the American Red Cross, plus her advancing age, Barton resigned as president in 1904, at the age of 83. 

Religious beliefs
Various authorities have called Barton a “Deist-Unitarian.” However, her actual beliefs varied throughout her life along a spectrum between [|freethought] and [|deism]. In a 1905 letter to Mrs. Norman Thrasher, she called herself a “[|Universalist].”[|[5]]

In 1975, [|Clara Barton National Historic Site] was established as a unit of the [|National Park Service] at Barton's [|Glen Echo, Maryland] home, where she spent the last 15 years of her life. One of the first [|National Historic Sites] dedicated to the accomplishments of a woman, it preserves the early history of the American Red Cross, since the home also served as an early headquarters of the organization. The National Park Service has restored eleven rooms, including the Red Cross offices, the parlors and Barton's bedroom. Visitors to Clara Barton National Historic Site can gain a sense of how Barton lived and worked. Guides lead tourists through the three levels, emphasizing Barton's use of her unusual home. Modern visitors can come to appreciate the site in the same way visitors did in Clara Barton's lifetime.[|[8]]


 * Women as Soldiers**

It is an accepted convention that the Civil War was a man's fight. Images of women during that conflict center on self-sacrificing nurses, romantic spies, or brave ladies maintaining the home front in the absence of their men. The men, of course, marched off to war, lived in germ-ridden camps, engaged in heinous battle, languished in appalling prison camps, and died horribly, yet heroically. This conventional picture of gender roles during the Civil War does not tell the entire story. Men were not the only ones to fight that war. Women bore arms and charged into battle, too. Like the men, there were women who lived in camp, suffered in prisons, and died for their respective causes. Both the Union and Confederate armies forbade the enlistment of women. Women soldiers of the Civil War therefore assumed masculine names, disguised themselves as men, and hid the fact they were female. Because they passed as men, it is impossible to know with any certainty how many women soldiers served in the Civil War. Estimates place as many as 250 women in the ranks of the Confederate army.[|(1)] Writing in 1888, Mary Livermore of the U.S. Sanitary Commission remembered that: Some one has stated the number of women soldiers known to the service as little less than four hundred. I cannot vouch for the correctness of this estimate, but I am convinced that a larger number of women disguised themselves and enlisted in the service, for one cause or other, than was dreamed of. Entrenched in secrecy, and regarded as men, they were sometimes revealed as women, by accident or casualty. Some startling histories of these military women were current in the gossip of army life.[|(2)] Livermore and the soldiers in the Union army were not the only ones who knew of soldier-women. Ordinary citizens heard of them, too. Mary Owens, discovered to be a woman after she was wounded in the arm, returned to her Pennsylvania home to a warm reception and press coverage. She had served for eighteen months under the alias John Evans.[|(3)] In the post - Civil War era, the topic of women soldiers continued to arise in both literature and the press. Frank Moore's Women of the War, published in 1866, devoted an entire chapter to the military heroines of the North. A year later, L. P. Brockett and Mary Vaughan mentioned ladies "who from whatever cause . . . donned the male attire and concealed their sex . . . [who] did not seek to be known as women, but preferred to pass for men."[|(4)] Loreta Velazquez published her memoirs in 1876. She served the Confederacy as Lt. Harry Buford, a self-financed soldier not officially attached to any regiment. The existence of soldier-women was no secret during or after the Civil War. The reading public, at least, was well aware that these women rejected Victorian social constraints confining them to the domestic sphere. Their motives were open to speculation, perhaps, but not their actions, as numerous newspaper stories and obituaries of women soldiers testified. Most of the articles provided few specific details about the individual woman's army career. For example, the obituary of Satronia Smith Hunt merely stated she enlisted in an Iowa regiment with her first husband. He died of battle wounds, but she apparently emerged from the war unscathed.[|(5)] An 1896 story about Mary Stevens Jenkins, who died in 1881, tells an equally brief tale. She enlisted in a Pennsylvania regiment when still a schoolgirl, remained in the army two years, received several wounds, and was discharged without anyone ever realizing she was female.[|(6)] The press seemed unconcerned about the women's actual military exploits. Rather, the fascination lay in the simple fact that they had been in the army. The army itself, however, held no regard for women soldiers, Union or Confederate. Indeed, despite recorded evidence to the contrary, the U.S. Army tried to deny that women played a military role, however small, in the Civil War. On October 21, 1909, Ida Tarbell of The American Magazine wrote to Gen. F. C. Ainsworth, the adjutant general: "I am anxious to know whether your department has any record of the number of women who enlisted and served in the Civil War, or has it any record of any women who were in the service?" She received swift reply from the Records and Pension Office, a division of the Adjutant General's Office (AGO), under Ainsworth's signature. The response read in part: I have the honor to inform you that no official record has been found in the War Department showing specifically that any woman was ever enlisted in the military service of the United States as a member of any organization of the Regular or Volunteer Army at any time during the period of the civil war. It is possible, however, that there may have been a few instances of women having served as soldiers for a short time without their sex having been detected, but no record of such cases is known to exist in the official files.[|(7)] This response to Ms. Tarbell's request is untrue. One of the duties of the AGO was maintenance of the U.S. Army's archives, and the AGO took good care of the extant records created during that conflict. By 1909 the AGO had also created compiled military service records (CMSR) for the participants of the Civil War, both Union and Confederate, through painstaking copying of names and remarks from official federal documents and captured Confederate records. Two such CMSRs prove the point that the army did have documentation of the service of women soldiers. It is an accepted convention that the Civil War was a man's fight. Images of women during that conflict center on self-sacrificing nurses, romantic spies, or brave ladies maintaining the home front in the absence of their men. The men, of course, marched off to war, lived in germ-ridden camps, engaged in heinous battle, languished in appalling prison camps, and died horribly, yet heroically. This conventional picture of gender roles during the Civil War does not tell the entire story. Men were not the only ones to fight that war. Women bore arms and charged into battle, too. Like the men, there were women who lived in camp, suffered in prisons, and died for their respective causes. Both the Union and Confederate armies forbade the enlistment of women. Women soldiers of the Civil War therefore assumed masculine names, disguised themselves as men, and hid the fact they were female. Because they passed as men, it is impossible to know with any certainty how many women soldiers served in the Civil War. Estimates place as many as 250 women in the ranks of the Confederate army.[|(1)] Writing in 1888, [|Mary Livermore] of the [|U.S. Sanitary Commission] remembered that: Some one has stated the number of women soldiers known to the service as little less than four hundred. I cannot vouch for the correctness of this estimate, but I am convinced that a larger number of women disguised themselves and enlisted in the service, for one cause or other, than was dreamed of. Entrenched in secrecy, and regarded as men, they were sometimes revealed as women, by accident or casualty. Some startling histories of these military women were current in the gossip of army life.[|(2)] Livermore and the soldiers in the Union army were not the only ones who knew of soldier-women. Ordinary citizens heard of them, too. Mary Owens, discovered to be a woman after she was wounded in the arm, returned to her Pennsylvania home to a warm reception and press coverage. She had served for eighteen months under the alias John Evans.[|(3)] In the post - Civil War era, the topic of women soldiers continued to arise in both literature and the press. Frank Moore's Women of the War, published in 1866, devoted an entire chapter to the military heroines of the North. A year later, L. P. Brockett and Mary Vaughan mentioned ladies "who from whatever cause . . . donned the male attire and concealed their sex . . . [who] did not seek to be known as women, but preferred to pass for men."[|(4)] Loreta Velazquez published her memoirs in 1876. She served the Confederacy as Lt. Harry Buford, a self-financed soldier not officially attached to any regiment. The existence of soldier-women was no secret during or after the Civil War. The reading public, at least, was well aware that these women rejected Victorian social constraints confining them to the domestic sphere. Their motives were open to speculation, perhaps, but not their actions, as numerous newspaper stories and obituaries of women soldiers testified. Most of the articles provided few specific details about the individual woman's army career. For example, the obituary of Satronia Smith Hunt merely stated she enlisted in an Iowa regiment with her first husband. He died of battle wounds, but she apparently emerged from the war unscathed.[|(5)] An 1896 story about Mary Stevens Jenkins, who died in 1881, tells an equally brief tale. She enlisted in a Pennsylvania regiment when still a schoolgirl, remained in the army two years, received several wounds, and was discharged without anyone ever realizing she was female.[|(6)] The press seemed unconcerned about the women's actual military exploits. Rather, the fascination lay in the simple fact that they had been in the army. The army itself, however, held no regard for women soldiers, Union or Confederate. Indeed, despite recorded evidence to the contrary, the U.S. Army tried to deny that women played a military role, however small, in the Civil War. On October 21, 1909, Ida Tarbell of The American Magazine wrote to Gen. F. C. Ainsworth, the adjutant general: "I am anxious to know whether your department has any record of the number of women who enlisted and served in the Civil War, or has it any record of any women who were in the service?" She received swift reply from the Records and Pension Office, a division of the Adjutant General's Office (AGO), under Ainsworth's signature. The response read in part: I have the honor to inform you that no official record has been found in the War Department showing specifically that any woman was ever enlisted in the military service of the United States as a member of any organization of the Regular or Volunteer Army at any time during the period of the civil war. It is possible, however, that there may have been a few instances of women having served as soldiers for a short time without their sex having been detected, but no record of such cases is known to exist in the official files.[|(7)] This response to Ms. Tarbell's request is untrue. One of the duties of the AGO was maintenance of the U.S. Army's archives, and the AGO took good care of the extant records created during that conflict. By 1909 the AGO had also created compiled military service records (CMSR) for the participants of the Civil War, both Union and Confederate, through painstaking copying of names and remarks from official federal documents and captured Confederate records. Two such CMSRs prove the point that the army did have documentation of the service of women soldiers. This lady dressed in men's clothes, Volunteered [sic], received bounty and for two weeks did all the duties of a soldier before she was found out, but her husband being discharged, she disclosed the fact, returned the bounty, and was immediately discharged April 20, 1862.[|(9)] Another woman documented in the records held by the AGO was Mary Scaberry, alias Charles Freeman, Fifty-second Ohio Infantry. Scaberry enlisted as a private in the summer of 1862 at the age of seventeen. On November 7 she was admitted to the General Hospital in Lebanon, Kentucky, suffering from a serious fever. She was transferred to a hospital in Louisville, and on the tenth, hospital personnel discovered "sexual incompatibility [sic]." In other words, the feverish soldier was female. Like John Williams, Scaberry was discharged from Union service.[|(10)] Not all of the women soldiers of the Civil War were discharged so quickly. Some women served for years, like Sarah Emma Edmonds Seelye, and others served the entire war, like Albert D. J. Cashier. These two women are the best known and most fully documented of all the women combatants. Records from the AGO show that Sarah Edmonds, a Canadian by birth, assumed the alias of Franklin Thompson and enlisted as a private in the Second Michigan Infantry in Detroit on May 25, 1861. Her duties while in the Union army included regimental nurse and mail and despatch carrier. Her regiment participated in the Peninsula campaign and the battles of First Manassas, Fredericksburg, and Antietam. On April 19, 1863, Edmonds deserted because she acquired malaria, and she feared that hospitalization would reveal her gender. In 1867 she married L. H. Seelye, a Canadian mechanic. They raised three children. In 1886 she received a government pension based upon her military service. A letter from the secretary of war, dated June 30 of that year, acknowledged her as "a female soldier who . . . served as a private . . . rendering faithful service in the ranks." Sarah Edmonds Seelye died September 5, 1898, in Texas.[|(11)] AGO records also reveal that on August 3, 1862, a nineteen-year-old Irish immigrant named Albert D. J. Cashier, described as having a light complexion, blue eyes, and auburn hair, enlisted in the Ninety-fifth Illinois Infantry. Cashier served steadily until August 17, 1865, when the regiment was mustered out of the Federal army. Cashier participated in approximately forty battles and skirmishes in those long, hard four years. After the war, Cashier worked as a laborer, eventually drew a pension, and finally went to live in the Quincy, Illinois, Soldiers' Home. In 1913 a surgeon at the home discovered that Albert D. J. Cashier was a woman. A public disclosure of the finding touched off a storm of sensational newspaper stories, for Cashier had lived her entire adult life as a man. None of Cashier's former comrades-in-arms ever suspected that he was a she. Apparently, neither did the commandant at the Soldiers' Home. She died October 11, 1914, in an insane asylum.[|(12)] [A deposition from a fellow soldier taken in 1915 revealed that her deception was quite complete.] || The writings of [|Bell Wiley] and [|Mary Massey] are good examples. Wiley wrote at some length of "the gentler sex who disguised themselves and swapped brooms for muskets [who] were able to sustain the deception for amazingly long periods of time." But he later refers to them, indirectly, as "freaks and distinct types."[|(13)] Massey erroneously asserted that "probably most of the women soldiers were prostitutes or concubines."[|(14)] For the most part, modern researchers looking for evidence of soldier-women must rely heavily upon Civil War diaries and late nineteenth-century memoirs. It is true that the military service of women did not affect the outcome of campaigns or battles. Their service did not alter the course of the war. Compared with the number of men who fought, the women are statistically irrelevant. But the women are significant because they were there and they were not supposed to be. The late nineteenth-century newspaper writers grasped this point. The actions of Civil War soldier-women flew in the face of mid-nineteenth-century society's characterization of women as frail, subordinate, passive, and not interested in the public realm. Simply because the woman soldier does not fit the traditional female image, she should not be excluded from, or misinterpreted in, current and future historical writings. While this essay cannot discuss all the soldier-women, their lives and military records, recent chroniclers of the Civil War and women's history have begun to note the gallantry of women in the ranks during the war.[|(15)] Most important, recent works refrain from stereotyping the women soldiers as prostitutes, mentally ill, homosexual, social misfits, or anything other than what they were: soldiers fighting for their respective governments of their own volition. It is perhaps hard to imagine how the women soldiers maintained their necessary deception or even how they successfully managed to enlist. It was probably very easy. In assuming the male disguise, women soldiers picked male names. Army recruiters, both Northern and Southern, did not ask for proof of identity. Soldier-women bound their breasts when necessary, padded the waists of their trousers, and cut their hair short. Loreta Velazquez wore a false mustache, developed a masculine gait, learned to smoke cigars, and padded her uniform coat to make herself look more muscular. While recruits on both sides of the conflict were theoretically subject to physical examinations, those exams were usually farcical. Most recruiters only looked for visible handicaps, such as deafness, poor eyesight, or lameness. Neither army standardized the medical exams, and those charged with performing them hardly ever ordered recruits to strip. That roughly 750 women enlisted attests to the lax and perfunctory nature of recruitment physical checks. Once in the ranks, successful soldier-women probably learned to act and talk like men. With their uniforms loose and ill-fitting and with so many underage boys in the ranks, women, especially due to their lack of facial hair, could pass as young men. Also, Victorian men, by and large, were modest by today's standards. Soldiers slept in their clothes, bathed in their underwear, and went as long as six weeks without changing their underclothes. Many refused to use the odorous and disgusting long, open-trenched latrines of camp. Thus, a woman soldier would not call undue attention to herself if she acted modestly, trekked to the woods to answer the call of nature and attend to other personal matters, or left camp before dawn to privately bathe in a nearby stream.[|(16)] Militarily, the women soldiers faced few disadvantages. The vast majority of the common soldiers during the Civil War were former civilians who volunteered for service. These amateur citizen soldiers enlisted ignorant of army life. Many privates had never fired a gun before entering the army. The women soldiers learned to be warriors just like the men. The women soldiers easily concealed their gender in order to fulfill their desire to fight. An unknown number of them, like Cashier, Jenkins, and Hunt, were never revealed as women during their army stint. Of those who were, very few were discovered for acting unsoldierly or stereotypically feminine. Though Sarah Collins of Wisconsin was suspected of being female by the way she put on her shoes, she was atypical.[|(17)] Also unusual were the Union women under Gen. Philip Sheridan's command, one a teamster and the other a private in a cavalry regiment, who got drunk and fell into a river. The soldiers who rescued the pair made the gender discoveries in the process of resuscitating them. Sheridan personally interviewed the two and later described the woman teamster as coarse and the "she-dragoon" as rather prepossessing, even with her unfeminine suntan.[|(18)] He did not state their real names, aliases, or regiments. For the most part, women were recognized after they had received serious wounds or died. Mary Galloway was wounded in the chest during the Battle of Antietam. Clara Barton, attending to the wound, discovered the gender of the soft-faced "boy" and coaxed her into revealing her true identity and going home after recuperation.[|(19)] One anonymous woman wearing the uniform of a Confederate private was found dead on the Gettysburg battlefield on July 17, 1863, by a burial detail from the Union II Corps.[|(20)] Based on the location of the body, it is likely the Southern woman died participating in Pickett's charge. In 1934, a gravesight found on the outskirts of Shiloh National Military Park revealed the bones of nine Union soldiers. Further investigation indicated that one of the skeletons, with a minieball by the remains, was female.[|(21)] The identities of these two dead women are lost to posterity. Some soldiers were revealed as women after getting captured. Frances Hook is a good example. She and her brother, orphans, enlisted together early in the war. She was twenty-two years old, of medium build, with hazel eyes and dark brown hair. Even though her brother was killed in action at Pittsburgh Landing, Hook continued service, probably in an Illinois infantry regiment, under the alias Frank Miller. In early 1864, Confederates captured her near Florence, Alabama; she was shot in the thigh during a battle and left behind with other wounded, who were also captured. While imprisoned in Atlanta, her captors realized her gender. After her exchange at Graysville, Georgia, on February 17, 1864, she was cared for in Union hospitals in Tennessee, then discharged and sent North in June. Having no one to return to, she may have reenlisted in another guise and served the rest of the war. Frances Hook later married, and on March 17, 1908, her daughter wrote the AGO seeking confirmation of her mother's military service. AGO clerks searched pertinent records and located documentation.[|(22)] Other prisoners of war included Madame Collier and Florina Budwin. Collier was a federal soldier from East Tennessee who enjoyed army life until her capture and subsequent imprisonment at Belle Isle, Virginia. She decided to make the most of the difficult situation and continued concealing her gender, hoping for exchange. Another prisoner learned her secret and reported it to Confederate authorities, who sent her North under a flag of truce. Before leaving, Collier indicated that another woman remained incarcerated on the island.[|(23)] Florina Budwin and her husband enlisted together, served side by side in battle, were captured at the same time by Confederates, and both sent to the infamous Andersonville prison. (The date of their incarceration has not been determined.) Mr. Budwin died there in the stockade, but Mrs. Budwin survived until after her transfer with other prisoners in late 1864 to a prison in Florence, South Carolina. There she was stricken by an unspecified epidemic, and a Southern doctor discovered her identity. Despite immediately receiving better treatment, she died January 25, 1865.[|(24)] The women soldiers of the Civil War engaged in combat, were wounded and taken prisoner, and were killed in action. They went to war strictly by choice, knowing the risks involved. Their reasons for doing so varied greatly. Some, like Budwin and Hook, wished to be by the sides of their loved ones. Perhaps others viewed war as excitement and travel. Working class and poor women were probably enticed by the bounties and the promise of a regular paycheck. And of course, patriotism was a primary motive. Sarah Edmonds wrote in 1865, "I could only thank God that I was free and could go forward and work, and I was not obliged to stay at home and weep."[|(25)] Obviously, other soldier-women did not wish to stay at home weeping, either. Herein lies the importance of the women combatants of the Civil War: it is not their individual exploits but the fact that they fought. While their service could not significantly alter the course of the war, women soldiers deserve remembrance because their actions display them as uncommon and revolutionary, with a valor at odds with Victorian views of women's proper role. Quite simply, the women in the ranks, both Union and Confederate, refused to stay in their socially mandated place, even if it meant resorting to subterfuge to achieve their goal of being soldiers. They faced not only the guns of the adversary but also the sexual prejudices of their society. The women soldiers of the Civil War merit recognition in modern American society because they were trailblazers. Women's service in the military is socially accepted today, yet modern women soldiers are still officially barred from direct combat. Since the Persian Gulf war, debate has raged over whether women are fit for combat, and the issue is still unresolved. The women soldiers of the Civil War were capable fighters. From a historical viewpoint, the women combatants of 1861 to 1865 were not just ahead of their time; they were ahead of our time. By **//DeAnne Blanton//** ||
 * || The Union CMSR for John Williams of the Seventeenth Missouri Infantry, Company H, shows that the nineteen-year-old soldier enlisted as a private on October 3, 1861, in St. Louis and was mustered into the regiment on the seventh. Later that month, Williams was discharged on the grounds: "proved to be a woman."[|(8)] The Confederate CMSR for Mrs. S. M. Blaylock, Twenty-sixth North Carolina Infantry, Company F, states:
 * || Despite the fact that the U.S. Army did not acknowledge or advertise their existence, it is surprising that the women soldiers of the Civil War are not better known today. After all, their existence was known at the time and through the rest of the nineteenth century. Even though some modern writers have considered Seelye and Cashier, the majority of historians who have written about the common soldiers of the war have either ignored women in the ranks or trivialized their experience. While references, usually in passing, are sometimes found, the assumption by many respected Civil War historians is that soldier-women were eccentric and their presence isolated. Textbooks hardly ever mention these women.


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