The Ladies TeaStop in and grab a quick cup of tea! All sorts of ladies issues are disscussed here. Both Ladies and Gentlemen are welcome to join in the conversations.
It turns out that ladies of Richmond, VA worked in the cannon laboratories. And excerpt from the book " Civil War Artillery at Gettysburg" by Philip Cole states the following horrific incident in Richmond in 1863, as accounted by Josiah Gorgas:
A fearful accident occored at our Laboratory here on Friday, the 13th of March, by which sixty-nine were killed and wounded, of whom sixty-two were females, chiefly girls and children. Only four were killed outright from the burns they received in the burning of their clothes. The number of dead will probably reach fifty. It is terrible to think of that so much suffering would arise from causes possibly within our control. The accident was caused by the ignition of a friction primer in the hands of a grown girl by the name of Mary Ryan. She lived three or four days and gave a clear account of the circumstances. The primer stuck in the varnishing board and she struck the board three times very hard on the table to drive out the primer. She says she was immediately blown up to the ceiling and on coming down was blown was again blown up. Cartridges were being broken up temporarily in the same room, where many operators were sent temporarily on account of repairs in the shop they usually worked in. The deaths are chiefly due to the burning of their clothes."
Hurrah Hurrah
For the sunny South so dear;
Three cheers for the homespun dress
The Southern ladies wear!
Women throughout the ages have been integral to wars. No war could be fought without them. Yet I cannot even begin to imagine the despair a woman in Mississippi or Georgia or wherever must have felt in 1865. Or the terror the women of Roswell Georgia felt being rounded up and shipped off by the trainloads to the north, never to be seen by their families again.
I have a tape of Confederate music I often listen to. A favorite song of mine is this one. Clearly the love the men and women had and have for each other is shown. Still brings a tear to my eye.
THE HOMESPUN DRESS
by Carrie Belle Sinclair
(born 1839)
Oh, yes, I am a Southern girl,
And glory in the name,
And boast it with far greater pride
Than glittering wealth and fame.
We envy not the Northern girl
Her robes of beauty rare,
Though diamonds grace her snowy neck
And pearls bedeck her hair.
CHORUS: Hurrah! Hurrah!
For the sunny South so dear;
Three cheers for the homespun dress
The Southern ladies wear!
The homespun dress is plain, I know,
My hat's palmetto, too;
But then it shows what Southern girls
For Southern rights will do.
We send the bravest of our land
To battle with the foe,
And we will lend a helping hand--
We love the South, you know.--CHORUS
Now Northern goods are out of date;
And since old Abe's blockade,
We Southern girls can be content
With goods that's Southern made.
We send our sweethearts to the war;
But, dear girls, never mind--
Your soldier-love will ne'er forget
The girl he left behind.--CHORUS
The soldier is the lad for me--
A brave heart I adore;
And when the sunny South is free,
And when fighting is no more,
I'll choose me then a lover brave
From all that gallant band;
The soldier lad I love the best
Shall have my heart and hand.--CHORUS
The Southern land's a glorious land,
And has a glorious cause;
Then cheer, three cheers for Southern rights,
And for the Southern boys!
We scorn to wear a bit of silk,
A bit of Northern lace,
But make our homespun dresses up,
And wear them with a grace.--CHORUS
And now, young man, a word to you:
If you would win the fair,
Go to the field where honor calls,
And win your lady there.
Remember that our brightest smiles
Are for the true and brave,
And that our tears are all for those
Who fill a soldier's grave.--CHORUS
Jennie Wade was the only civilian to die in the Battle of Gettysburg. The man she loved was also a casualty of the Civil War.
The story of the only civilian to die in the Civil War battle of Gettysburg is perhaps a well-known one, but the story behind the scenes is less known. It is the story of friendship and love that began as beautifully and ended as tragically for the two young people involved.
Mary Virginia Wade was born May 21, 1843. Her birthplace was Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and twenty years later, she was buried there.
When Jennie, as she was called, was a child, her father worked for a man named Johnston Hastings Skelly, Sr. Mr. Skelly had a son of the same name, known as Jack. Jack and Jennie were friends for most of their lives. They grew up together and played together as children.
Then it is believed that their relationship grew closer and Jennie must have been heartbroken in April of 1861 when Jack was mustered into the service. Suddenly Jack was off to war with the 2nd Pennsylvania Infantry and Jennie was alone.
During their childhood years, and until the time of the war, a friend to both Jack and Jennie was John Wesley Culp, known as Wesley. By the time war had broken out, Wesley was living in West Virginia and decided to fight for the Confederacy. Family members remained in Gettysburg and fought for the Union, and Wesleys friend, Jack, also was fighting with the Union. The Civil War was in full swing and the friends Jack and Wesley were on opposite sides.
On June 15th of 1863, Jack Skelly found himself fighting a battle in Carters Woods, Virginia. After being wounded, he was moved to a hospital in Winchester. Sometime during this period, the friends met once more, in what turned out to be the last time, and Jack gave Wesley a message to deliver to Jennie.
Wesley soon was to return to Gettysburg for battle, but had an opportunity to see his sisters. He mentioned that he had a message for someone but he needed to deliver it in person. On July 3rd, 1863, before a chance had materialized to deliver the message, Wesleys outfit entered a battle to take Culps Hill from Union forces. He was mortally wounded that day on his own familys land.
The same day, July 3rd, Jennie stood in the kitchen of her sisters home baking bread for the Union soldiers. She had gotten such joy from helping and feeding them. Earlier that morning, shed sneaked out with her brother to gather wood to keep the fire going for the bread baking. Then she read a passage from the Bible and started her day of baking.
A sharpshooters bullet passed through two doors and struck Jennie, who fell immediately with a mortal wound. She had been mixing dough for bread in a dough tray. The bullet entered her back below the shoulder blade and pierced her heart.
Union soldiers heard the screams from Jennies sister and ran into the kitchen. Jennies body was carried to the basement and a picture of Jack was found in her dress pocket. The message from her beloved Jack died with Wesley Culp, and the same day, Jennies life was lost.
Jack Skelly lost his battle to live on July 12th, just nine days after his Jennie lost her's. Their story remains a tragic one of love and friendship that defied the bounds of earth. Today Jack and Jennie lie in rest close to each other in the Evergreen Cemetery at Gettysburg, together again.
Tommy, I have heard the Homespun poem before, and can you imagin a formal occasion, a ball or wedding where the ladies would skip the silk for homespun? But I read the diary of Cornellia Peak McDonald, of Winchester, VA, and she makes comment in it that a very prodimnant woman of Winchester, before the Union came in for the first of 72 times, had a wedding reception for her daughter, and she wore homespun to it.
CHARLESTON MERCURY, January 8, 1863, . 1, c. 4 A Female Soldier.--Among the strange, heroic, and self-sacrificing acts of women in this struggle for our independence, we have heard of none which exceeds the bravery displayed and hardships endured by the subject of this notice, Mrs. Amy Clarke. Mrs. Clarke volunteered with her husband as a private, fought through the battles of Shiloh, where Mr. Clarke was killed--she performing the rites of burial with her own hands. She then continued with Bragg's army in Kentucky, fighting in the ranks as a common soldier, until she was twice wounded--once in the ankle and then in the breast, when she fell a prisoner into the hands of the Yankees. Her sex was discovered by the Federals, and he was regularly paroled as a prisoner of war, but they did not permit her to return until she had donned female apparel. Mrs. C. was in our city on Sunday last, en route for Bragg's command. Jackson Mississippian.
__________________ Thea
No one has permission to use any material from any of my posts on any CWT forum, the archives, or any other forum without my express written permission.
CHARLESTON MERCURY, February 5, 1863, p. 1, c. 3-4
We find in the London Times another long letter from Mr. Lawley, its correspondent in the South. We make some interesting extracts:
Culpeper Court House, Va.,
November 14, 1862.
. . . Meanwhile, in the shelter of the dense woods about Culpeper, in wonderful spirits, with physique greatly improved since the bloody day at Sharpsburg, are clustered the tatter-demalion regiments of the South. It is a strange thing to look at these men, so ragged, slovenly, sleeveless, without a superfluous ounce of flesh upon their bones, with wild matted hair, in mendicants rags, and to think when the battle flag goes to the front, how they can and do fight. "There is only one attitude in which I never should be ashamed of your seeing my men, and that is when they are fighting." These were General Lee's words to me the first time I ever saw him; they have been confirmed by every other distinguished officer in the Confederacy. There are triumphs of daring which these poor, ragged men have attempted, and attempted successfully in this war, which have never been attempted by their Sybarite opponents. Again and again they have stormed batteries formidably defended at the point of the bayonet; nothing of the kind has ever been attempted by the Federals.
Again and again has Gen. Stuart's cavalry surprised Federal camps at night; no Confederate camp has been surprised since the beginning of the war. One or two regiments of these tattered men will stand firm, though attacked by overwhelming numbers of the enemy, and will constantly under such circumstances successfully hold their ground. Reverse the conditions, and see how long Federal regiments would bear such a blunt. Lastly, even a small body of these men, under a favorite commander like Stonewall Jackson, have again and again thrown themselves on the flank or rear of immense armies of the Federals and done desperate execution. Where has anything of the kind ever been attempted by their opponents? It is a never failing source of wonder and admiration to the observer to see these men, so miserably found in every respect, so sparsely fed, so destitute of blankets, and yet so cheerful and light-hearted under every privation, so resolute and indomitable in suffering and in doing, so irresistible in the field. It is a lesson in the duty of every day life which no man can watch without improvement and advantage. Say what anybody likes, these are the true heroes of the memorable struggle for Southern independence. No one would wish to deny to the commanding Generals their full mead of praise for the conduct of operations in the field; but they would be the last men to deny that higher praise is due to the suffering but indomitable rank and file who have borne cold and hunger and inadequate food and endless privations without a murmur, and yet have never bated a jot of heart or hope. . . .
__________________ Thea
No one has permission to use any material from any of my posts on any CWT forum, the archives, or any other forum without my express written permission.
I had previously said that this thread wouldn't be about those ladies who were involved in spying, soldiering, etc., but since I don't want to start another thread because I don't know how many of these stories are out there, I'm putting this here.
Disguised as a man (left), Frances Clayton served many months in Missouri artillery and cavalry units. (By courtesy of the Trustees of the Boston Public Library) 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.
__________________ Thea
No one has permission to use any material from any of my posts on any CWT forum, the archives, or any other forum without my express written permission.
Thea, you talk about women being beaten with the ugly stick, no wonder Frances was able to disquise herself as a man with no one knowing!!! Wow!
This is a great article. I haven't had a chance to be on the boards as of late. SO am doing a little catching up here today. But what a great thread you have going here. I shall have to take some serious time to look the whole thing over.
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Disguised as a man (left), Frances Clayton served many months in Missouri artillery and cavalry units. (By courtesy of the Trustees of the Boston Public Library) 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.
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