JPK Huson 1863
Brev. Brig. Gen'l
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2012
- Location
- Central Pennsylvania
So many women ended up ' making headlines ' through the war years, your head sometimes spins trying to follow their stories. It hit me. " Is she a good witch, or a bad witch? " , is frequently why. Entire governments puzzled this question, apparently. Bumped into two, not-unconnected examples, as ever, one of each. Side, I mean. Maybe?
Two women, for a time the focus of national scorn or heroines to another cause, blazed across headlines.
Northern papers ran stories on shamed and shameful " Mrs. Hutchins ", that Maryland monster in petticoats who gave a sword to a Confederate. It somehow compromised national security, the entire war , freedom for an entire race, the future of the Union itself and our Founding Fathers' legacy hung on this act. And phew, good thing she was caught. Now winning this war is a foregone conclusion.
Goodness. Honest, Salem was not alone in paranoid hysteria.
Her cousin, Harry.
" Dear Cousin Harry, Please try not to be killed. We all bought you a sword. Love, your cousin Sarah " ( I just made that up )
No, Sarah should not have communicated with her cousin. No one had ever known martial law or war much less the vindictive fury of a government wasting tax dollars bullying women - or how very powerful such entities can be.
This was Maryland. The Confederate officer was Mrs. Hutchin's cousin.
Lincoln enraged misogynists everywhere by springing her from prison and issuing a pardon. That was held to be a secret plot to spring a Southern women accused of the Union sympathizing from her own, Southern prison. * sigh *
This could not have been true. Mary Allan's husband paid 100,000 dollars, a preposterous sum, to keep her out of prison. A kind of ' brother ' to Poe, (( Patterson's parents took him in at age 3 ) he was hugely wealthy himself and came from a hugely wealthy family. As to ' insane ', she was so vilified it affected her emotionally. Not, please know, yet another crazy female.
Only Mrs. Patterson Allan, on war's looking glass's other side, never saw the inside of a prison. Thanks largely to some bottomless wealth buying bottomless lawyers ( and General Winder dying at the right time ), the trial resulting from letters she was held to have written dragged on long enough for the war to end- all of a sudden no one cared.
I'd like to point out ' back at the ranch ', female soldiers were tossed in the pokey, too and without a pesky trial. Well, all the proof was there. Fighting While Female, seems open and shut, except for the part where sentence was passed.
Winder really, really wanted her punished- battle raged for two years.
Mrs. Allan's case was worse than Mrs. Hutchins, make no mistake. But. There are some odd twists which are just, plain fishy- hence a two year trial. In 2017 most consider her guilty and she could be. She apparently wrote a letter to Rev. Morgan Dix, son of Union General John A. Dix, wrapped in a letter to a northern cousin. It was certainly awful- military information was contained within it. Several questions remain though.
1. With mail watched, why would she have taken the risk?
2. Why was this letter opened in the first place? A man named Burns did so, based on a ' feeling '.
3. Why did the family of a man she supposedly compromised - the information could have gotten him killed-strongly defend her?
It's Google-able, long threads are a big snore- hopefully the grist, if not the gist is here.
We do know that no, she was not traded by Lincoln for Mrs. Hutchins. The usual journalistic snark. Mrs. Patterson Allen went to live with her Ohio relatives post war. Her husband stayed in Richmond. This could mean she simply could not tolerate life in Richmond as a suspected Union sympathizer. Entrenched, Patterson may not have wished to leave. It could also indicate she was guilty and it broke up the marriage.
Once again, would like to point out that in the South, too, female soldiers went straight to the pokey.
It was a tough war for women, all the way around. Please do not misunderstand me, especially where Mrs. Patterson is concerned- if that letter was hers, it was certainly an infamous act. It was the headlines amidst the carnage, The National Enquirer side show, bearded lady flavor in these stories, while the future of an entire race hung over a much more significant sword's edge than Mrs. Hutchin's gift to her Confederate cousin.
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