JPK Huson 1863
Brev. Brig. Gen'l
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2012
- Location
- Central Pennsylvania
From an officer's memoir's, this image depicts Libby and Son's ship's chandlery as the famous Libby prison, Richmond. Several men held there during the war wrote of a young girl captured as a trooper, discovered and exchanged.
One officer's account;
War provided quite a few exceptions to the era adage where a lady's name only appeared in print three times. Happily, some of our most beloved women of the war shattered this code by regular appearances as genuine heroines. Mother Bickerdyke, Sojourner Truth, Phoebe Pemberton, Sisters of Charity, Clara Barton, Annie Wittenmeyer, Harriet Tubman for instance, made illustrious news, not infamous. It was wonderful.
It was also in stark contrast to the accepted, ridiculous practice of publishing say, an arrested prostitute's name and referring to the er, gentleman arrested with her as ' a gentleman '. Unnamed.
We do have wonderful books on these topics, by authors we're lucky enough to know. Point is a little comprehensive, that we girls have so many stories through those years no one could document all of them. A lot are still out there.
From a Frank Leslie's spread, 1861, part of normal duties in Washington, DC. That prison would have been Old Capitol City.
Spies were quite real- found a ' Union female soldier, CONFEDERATE female spy. Good stuff.
Papers naturally were terribly insulting about each other so please no one go up a wall- the point is the female Confederate soldier.
Hate to rely so heavily on era papers; they're just so incredibly more valuable as reflective of what we were all doing 150 years ago than later interpretations. It would be terrific not to separate us, North v South. We were everywhere.
Haven't had time to look up Florinda. Union and Confederate, women were discovered scooped up as prisoners, or suspected as being females and turned in.
In 1861, new articles began to appear. The gloves were off, for one thing, it seemed when it came to a whole, new classification of female- those who went to war. Here's where it becomes a little convoluted. Spies and female soldiers were pitched into jail, sometimes as prostitutes ( because why else would a woman follow men to war? ), but sometimes written of with great sympathy, if not respect.
Arrested..... after serving over 2 years.
Here's Amy Clark
It states she was paroled as a POW- cannot find where?
City prison. *sigh*
There have been so many conjectures on how many women fought at Gettysburg it's crazy. We'll simply never know. We were there.