The experiences of women during the American Civil War has varied greatly, and the many ways in which historians have interpreted their involvement has met that challenge of understanding women’s responses to the war. This course strives to help us understand the Civil War and how it affected the nation and historical thought, how are we to accomplish that as historians unless we take all segments of the population into consideration. Women have been the unsung ones, the ones working tirelessly behind the scenes as others took credit for their actions, but today we seek to understand the whole of society. Even the segment of the population whom did see rights after the end of the war did not generally mean women, women were relegated to their cults of true womanhood and domesticity.[1] However, historians do not forget, we strive to understand, to create a historical record, and that is what this paper will do along with others in the field. Today we can find a rich tradition of scholars that are now seriously examining women’s experiences and providing a cogent conversation on the lives of Civil War era women, the tangible differences they made, and their impact on Civil War historiography is immeasurable.

As Dr. Blight has noted repeatedly in his lectures for Yale, there is no aspect of the nation so defining and relevant to our nation today than that of the American Civil War, it was the end of Republic of our Founding Fathers and the birth of a completely new nation and Union that would be a new entity.[2] However, how are we to understand that war if we do not seek to understand every person’s experience? Each segment of the society held different experiences and impacts, but women’s involvement spanned generations, social issues, politics, fundraising, caregiving, agriculture, labor, and domestic chores as well during the war. At the end of the Civil War slaves were free, black men able to act as citizens and act in political manners, all had their rights, yet what of women? It would be many long years before women would have rights, their stories swept under the rug while others would take credit for their actions. Socially, women were able to function as men for the first time during the war, some even having some measures of freedom as noted by Blanton and Cook, especially women who were pretending to men to fight as soldiers.[3] Many women experienced a level of freedom and autonomy not open and available to women in their day. Legally, women were denied all rights and the ability to create a functioning existence for themselves that was economically viable, socially acceptable and appreciated, as well as constitutionally recognized. Sadly, after the war, all those areas where women had seen advances, were removed, women were relegated to the realm of domesticity into the 20^th century.

Blanton, DeAnne, and Lauren M. Cook. 2005. They Fought like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War. Stroud: Sutton.

They Fought like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War, by DeAnne Blanton and Lauren M. Cook, is a poignant look at the accomplishments of women who fought in the Civil War in a soldier’s uniform as a man. These women made extraordinary sacrifices and made heroic accomplishments, all the while experiencing a life that Victorian society did not see fit for a woman. They still fought, bravely and well.[4] Blanton and Cook feel that several hundred women faked their gender and joined the Civil War to fight for their sides; they feel these women are an undersung group of women who need their voices heard. The authors wished to demonstrate that these women exhibited a level of valor, bravery, promotion rate, and dedication to their duty that went beyond that of their male counterparts.[5]

In 2005, a plethora of sources opened to historians as technology advanced. The beginnings of a burgeoning field of digital records and archives were coming to the forefront; new sources were making the light of day. Ideas, both new and old, were coming together to formulate new roles they found women taking part. Women responded to the American Civil War much in the same way as men, the accepted of number of women is upwards of at least 400.[6] Historians are beginning to tell the tale of extraordinary women, and by painstakingly researching hundreds of files, they were able to reconstruct what they feel to be an accurate representation of the exploits, success, daring, and achievements of women fighting in the war as men. Gender history is ripe with sources that examine the ability of men and women to function as a part of their gender and social responses. This book delves into the vast changes, a new world, that was opened to women joining the military as men, ushering in a new era of historian that is interested in placing women in an accurate context to the Civil War. Dr. Blight in his lecture series on the Civil War discusses the impacts to women and the home front, stating that many women responded to war by going off to join and fight, also confirming that there were 400 hundred that fought in the war he was aware of, directly upholding the same figures from Blanton and Cook.[7] McPherson states that the cult of domesticity reigned supreme on the home front and that the war opened up all sorts of economic freedoms for women of all manner.[8] Blanton and Cook feel the extraordinary lives these women led deserved documentation and require Americans to rethink our past and those that fought in this nation’s bloodiest conflict, the American Civil War.

When considering women’s history and the Civil War, there are some notable standouts, many included in this bibliography, certain historians stand out. The most influential and applicable to this annotation being Grant, McDevitt, Limerick, Hyde, Forbes, Freehling and of course, Faust, as they seem to embrace women’s issues within the context of the war. However, all of these historians note that women’s roles changed drastically during the war as did their experiences, yet when we examine this book it stands in a field of few outright competitors for its importance. The undertaking of this book is a subject matter not easily found, though wonderfully we are seeing work on these types of activities with women, such as soldiering, making the light of day. Therefore, not many historians populated the subject field of women’s Civil War military history. The women who fought in the military had a status during the war that was far elevated from prior to the war, and after the war, they were forced to return to the cult of domesticity as Foner and McPherson discuss. Though returning to the cult of true womanhood, these women fought for their rights and pensions with the Army and won their benefits for their war service.

Blight, PhD., David.  “Dr. David Blight, The Civil War, and Reconstruction Yale Lecture Series: Homefronts and Battlefronts: “Hard War” and the Social Impact of the Civil War.” Yale Courses at Yale University. YouTube. Accessed April 12, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/user/YaleCourses/search?query=Blight.

Dr. Blight is a lecturer on The Civil War and Reconstruction for Yale University, and this series are lectures previously recorded during his class, The Civil War and Reconstruction, for the Yale Lecture Series. In his episode, Homefronts and Battlefronts: “Hard War” and the Social Impact of the Civil War, Dr. Blight discusses women and the homefront and the ways that women’s experiences influenced soldiers, and their patriotism, as well as the rest of the nation’s accomplishments, moving into recovery at the homefront, without men, in the years of reconstruction.[9] Women must be included in the voice of history because they were left to run businesses, farms, homesteads, ran off to war, raised children, worked in factories, acted as nurses, organizers of aid, abolitionists or staunch slaveholders alike.[10] This work places the voices and impacts of women at the forefront for a frank discussion of their impact and role in society during this difficult and bloody period. Yale’s Dr. Blight is one of the leading authorities on the Civil War, his books, writings, and lectures considered required graduate reading. This work is no exception to the rule and also discusses the leading thinkers in his opinion, Drew Gilpin Faust being one. An intimate look at the war, seeing the impacts of women in business, at home, in the camps, the army hospitals, or anywhere else showed they could make a difference in many aspects of the Civil War, both good and bad.[11]

The workplaces us in the lives of the people that lived through the years, but the work itself is a current course offering at one of the most influential schools in the nation, rather the world: Yale. Dr. Blight’s current lecture series for his course on the Civil War and Reconstruction give us the current schools of historical interpretations, methodology, and theory that are available to us today as historians. The work allows us, any of us, to tap into the vast knowledge of one of the leading minds in Civil War and Reconstruction History. These types of critical thinking, higher education, learning environments provide us with cutting edge theory regarding the fact that women were not passive participants in their world. Dr. Blight demonstrates that women were active in all manner of life during the war, men left to go to war, but life had to continue, children needed fed, crops sown, harvested, and money earned.[12]

Dr. Blight argues that women were active in their war efforts and their impacts were felt in all manner of ways. Women took part in the economy much as men before them, with no choice but to turn to an income, factories needed workers, organizers of relief were needed, nurses in the hospitals, women helping in the fields, in homes, and even on the battlefield he notes. Historians, such as Blanton and Cook have asserted women played a larger part in the picture and today historians such as Blight, McPherson, Foner, and the like credit women with far more of a slice of Civil War history. Today historians see the value in women’s roles during the American Civil Wars in ways there were not appreciated in the past. Women were able to gain a better status, but sadly, as noted by Blight, these advances in their liberties, freedom, economic, and standing would go right back to the cult of domesticity and true womanhood.[13] McPherson notes the same losses for women and states for them; it would be far longer a fight for freedom that it would be for the black men of our country.[14] After all, there was freedom, rights, and liberties for African Americans, but for women, there was not a happy resolution of their bondage. Not all were truly free.

Few historians can claim the level of expertise that Dr. Blight has achieved. He is one of the leading experts, maybe not in women themselves of the war, but of the Civil War, and particularly the Reconstruction era experience. He specifically comments on the ability and expert handling of New Women’s History by Drew Gilpin Faust, a featured historian in this historiography. With the level of ranking and academic achievement of Dr. Blight, I feel that it especially highlights the importance of Dr. Faust to the field as well. These are some of the finest minds in Civil War scholarship, and they all say that women had an impact, they made a difference.[15] He outlines Drew’s key ideas regarding women and some that she has recently backed off from in the field of white Confederate women’s rhetoric, stating that she is truly the top in her field and willing to reconsider theories. As Dr. Blight notes, technology changes and new sources are located to fill in the gaps, evolving the ways we are extrapolating data and applying that to narrative history.[16] New sources are continually located in unlikely areas, archives are now digitized at higher rates, and social historians have made those things useful by changing the face of Civil War scholarship. As new scholars, such as Faust, McDevitt, and others are emerging, we are seeing ever changing avenues in Civil War history.

Burns, Ken, “Civil War Documentary.” Public Broadcasting Systems; PBS 1990, via https://www.netflix.com/browse?jbv=70202577&jbp=0&jbr=3.

Ken Burns created, The Civil War Documentary, in conjunction with PBS, and brought together the best primary source letters read alongside moving images from the war and the participants who were impacted. The purpose was to shed light on one of America’s most defining moments, but more importantly, it introduced Americans to the people of the war in ways never known before, listening to their own words.[17] Specifically, of note, the letters of Mary Chestnut, as they open us to life during the war like never before, it is an intimate look at the elite of the Confederate society and the issues that would assail her during the war. Mary set out to chronicle the war as best she could and what we are left with offers us some of the best nuances for how women of her time approached the war. Especially, when the women of the South have their patriotism called into question in the face of extreme hardships.

At the time this work was created it was cutting edge. Ken Burns set the tone for the future of documentaries that are on the level of academic acceptance. His work, created for the Public Broadcasting System, is available to all. Burns interviews leading minds on the incidents that occurred, particularly that of Shelby Foote, Barbara Fields, and Ed Bearss and a plethora of other notable people with vast amounts of knowledge. In a moving, and realistic portrayal of the war, Burns attempts to help Americans understand the war, the reasons why slavery became such a divisive issue, and how states would use the rallying cry of sovereignty to fight to keep others enslaved. Produced in the early 1990s, this set a tone for a new age of documentary filmmaking and reintroduced thousands of Americans to their past through the hardships of those in the war.[18]

Shelby Foote and Dr. Barbara Fields were two of the leading minds involved in the production, and as such both lend authenticity to the work. Often quoted by other scholars, Foote, noted for his Confederate history knowledge, and Fields for her vast slavery and African American history expertise. Though the works were cutting edge, the figures and facts are somewhat dated now; we expect there are closer to 850, 000 deaths that impacted the women at home and there have been more sources and studies applied to the field since its early days. Even still, this work, and men like Foote, are quoted frequently in graduate-level resource materials and module overviews such as the one listed for this course. Though dated at times, this piece will stand the test of time and historians still point to it as an epic coverage of an epic time.

Faust, Drew Gilpin. 2010. Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

In, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War, Drew Gilpin Faust examines the lives of white women of the Confederate South and the impacts that the war had on them, and in turn, they had on the war. The women of the South saw the war in ways that other women did not, the war was in their backyard, their hardships evident, their slaves running off or in outright rebellion at the chaos left in the wake of no men on the plantations.[19] Drew’s more controversial thesis aspects are that she argues that women clung to traditional roles in the South, more than going out and seeking new roles, and pushing to keep the rights they gained in the war, unlike women of the North. Though this is an area that Dr. Blight discusses as well, he notes there is a fair bit of validity to the argument.[20]

The era was a period when women’s history was making great strides, and many life Faust were covering never before handled territory, in the case of this book, the beginnings of historiography that is now richer for these historians. The work is considered groundbreaking, examining a large breadth of primary sources, some finding the light of day for the first time since the war. The book is part of a wider discussion of the previous dismissal of the impact of women on the war, particularly the women of the Confederacy. Those women saw a part of the war that took place in many of their yards, lost their family members, son’s, brothers, and husbands in a cause they began to question the just nature of and abandoned. This book looks at the women of the war and places them in the greater context of the war itself, not just relegating them to the sidelines of fringe importance, they had an impact, they mattered, and their rhetoric helps us understand who they were in life. Though many have backed away from wholesale labels of women’s actions, this book is still considered a masterpiece in the field and one of the best of its kind in examining the women of the Confederacy.

In the early 90s, we saw the rise of some scholarship that featured the Confederate women’s unique experience during the Civil War, with the onset of the Ken Burns Civil War series we became deeply entrenched with the trials and tribulations of Mary Chestnut.[21] Historians such as Faust, are changing the dialog, no longer is it all about men and their realm. Other historians are putting forth scholarship that adds to the conversation in this vein, such as Grant and McDevitt. Specifically, in later years we see Faust’ influence in other historians of current note, for instance, Kimberly Harrison who also does work specifically on the women of the Confederacy and their rhetoric.[22] As more and more resources are digitized, and more sources located we add to the historical record, with every piece of scholarship we change the current views of one of the most intensely identifying and traumatic experiences of our nation: The Civil War.

Faust, Drew Gilpin, “This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War.” New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012.

Drew Gilpin Faust as mentioned previously, is a leading women’s history professor and mind on the women of the Civil War. In her work, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, examines American’s tremendous capacity for the task of dealing with death and dying. The war created death and issues surrounding dying away from home, something not common to the times, that Americans had never experienced prior to this period. Faust examines the impacts that death and dying had on all facets of lives at a time when the nation was honoring its Civil War Anniversary and memory. The piece is not specifically on on women, but a poignant look at the way death approach by each gender and the ways they define and handle death. An arena that women had a great deal of involvement. Faust examines how people deal with the threats, reality, and immediacy of death and dying on the battlefield, as well as the devastation of mourning for someone family cannot bury in a grave, nor possibly know how they died. [23] These issues made up how men and women responded to the horrors of war, and the historiography of death has a lot to do with women, and their ability to aid in the process or take part.

This war killed an estimated number that some say it close to 850,000 people, in order to truly understand what the Civil War experience even means, we must understand the historical, traumatizing, and impacting issues that came along with death on this magnitude, never had Americans faced so much death. If we hope to understand the experiences of women in the war, we must understand the experiences of death and loss, not only from an economic and sociopolitical aspect but from the basis of everyday life changing forever.[24] Fathers never came home to the families; women were left to try and pick up the pieces wrought by death. Faust argues that death was a traumatic experience on the family that was left behind, death on a magnitude not seen in society previously; this was the creation of what was called the death culture in later years.[25] This work also is crucial for reconstruction context, as when we think of Americans creating this new and better Union, they are doing so in mourning. Death would become intertwined with war memory in ways that forever changed the face of dying and of death rituals and customs in the cultural landscape of Victorian America.[26] This work is in a category unto itself and helps us shed added context to not only Civil War history, the historiography of death, but also the Reconstruction attitudes regarding the roles that women had to take on, such as the job of the Memorialization for the dead, distinctly women’s work.[27]

Faust researched government, as well as military, source materials, along with personal writing primary sources. In works like these, where not many previous works examine the idea of death in the same way, we see a forging of new territories. The History of Death can be a fascinating lens to apply to situations such as this, and other historians look to this work to inform them. Dr. David Blight mentioned this book and its author specifically as groundbreaking; it helps us to understand the surviving American public in ways that only death can explain.[28] As our knowledge and ability to critically use certain data comes to the forefront, we can use this data to explain to the people that were left behind in ways that might not have possible previously. We might not have an exact count of dead soldiers, but we have an accurate count of widows and orphans, those also as Blight noted, make up a wealth of knowledge that can change the tide of scholarship forever.[29]

Foner, Eric, “A Short History of the Reconstruction, 1863-1877,” Harper Collins Publishing, New York, NY, 1988.

Eric Foner is another one of the leading American Civil War historians of our time, and he specializes in the Civil War Reconstruction era, post-depression American collective memory. In his work, A Short History of the Reconstruction, 1863-1877, for Harper Collins Publishing in 1988, is an abridged version for graduate schools of the modern telling of Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution. He states that he is attempting to make sense of the post-depression Reconstruction era for its social, political, and economic impacts on American lives.[30] Moreover, it is still to this day considered one of the best resources for Reconstruction history. Foner states that, that citizenship, rights, freedom, and democracy are a part of the 14^th Amendment and its place in our lives is to clarify what we fought so hard to win, liberty truly for all.[31] Foner believed the most striking impacts were felt by the freed black people of the nation, and by remembering that and their struggle through the dark years of the coming racist and white supremacist laws that would seek to call the 14^th Amendment into question, this we must never allow happening, and we must always remember.[32] In Foner’s words, “I hope we never lose sight of the fact that something very important for the future of our society was taking place during the reconstruction.[33]

Foner deals with the unique perspectives of the Union experience and view of what reconstruction was to the Northerners, the Southerners, and the uniquely unifying experiences of black Americans, as well as the American people. As such, Foner is a leader in helping to create what is today the most modern and up to date historiographical and research interpretations of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Foner addresses the hard questions, like why reconstruction failed, what did it look like for widows, returning soldiers, and refugees, of which the South had many. His contributions set the tone and prevailing theories regarding reconstruction and the post-depression American experience.

The top minds in Civil War experience minds to date, James McPherson, Drew Faust, William Freehling, and David Blight, and a list of some hundreds of other historians all count Foner as necessary to any historiographical discussion on the experience of the American people during this time. This book, included because it gives us crucial views of the lives of all people, but it also gives important emphasis on the experiences of those left behind, and a great deal of those were women left to support families. Not specifically aligned with women’s history, this book is more on par with James McPherson’s epic work, Battle Cry of Freedom, in which he too examines the modern interpretations and sets the tone for modern Civil War experience theory.[34] Both books are crucial for setting the tone and context of the discussions currently held on the Civil War, in order to understand that elusive widow, left to fend for herself, we must fully understand the world in which she lives. The evolution of the Civil War is a fascinating one, from one of “state’s rights” to one of a fight sparked over the explosive issue that was slavery in the Antebellum South, its expansion into the new territories, and its core centrality to the reasons behind succession. As Dr. Frank Smith, told his C-Span audience, every argument over state’s rights became infused with slavery, it was pervasive in all aspects of the culture, the political system, and the economy, no matter how hard anyone wanted to deny it.[35] These are arguments that these men all helped to formulate, and one cannot discuss the historiography of the war without including these books.

Forbes, Ella. African American Women During the Civil War, Routledge, 1998. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/lib/snhu-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1111772.

Ella Forbes is one of the top African American historians studying the unique experience of Civil War era black Americans, be it freed, slave, or newly freed, these women lived lives and dealt with society on a different level than that of their white American counterparts. Forbes argues that we must get past the wholesale objectification of the African American woman in the historiography and replace it with a cogent conversion including the voices from real women, making a difference in this turbulent time.[36] Forbes feels that a cogent look at the way that women expressed their gender and related to the African American man was different that of white women and that their unique perspective was one of collective good for the community, not just the family. The family, however, is at the core of that and the reason for the continuity being a communal effort on the part of women in the black community opening a field that has lacked serious, in-depth historiography.

At the time of its creation, this work brought the lives and experiences to the light of women that had never had their stories told, as well as women who were better known, such as Susan King Taylor and Henrietta Tubman. The book delves into the experiences and roles of the women who worked with military camps, African American soldiers, aid organizations, and would later press for the creation of the Freedman’s Bureau.[37] This book broke ground for more historiography and research to be done on the African American women’s experience during the war; she brought sources to bear that had not been seen before and contributed to the field’s conversation in immeasurable ways. She again is another scholar who sets the bar in her field for the dominant modern theories surrounding the collective experience and nature of the African American woman.

Joining the field of influential historians such as Barbara Fields, Ira Berlin, and John Hope Franklin, Forbes moves into the elusive arena of the lacking women’s historical narrative. This work is in a field of its own in many ways for this historiography; it would take a paper of its own to cover just this one segment of society. We must not forget the hard work and hard-won, enduring legacy that the women of the Civil War left behind, and this is the book that helps us understand the life of a freed slave and free black women alike. Blight repeatedly mentions in his Yale lectures that the African American experience is unique, a collective impact was shared and a collective solution to the survival of the black family and black communities as free, thriving, American residents, not property.

Freehling, William W., “The South vs. the South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War.” New York: Oxford University Press. 2002.

William Freehling, a professor of American History, wrote, The South vs. The South: How the Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War, as a look at ways class conflict within the South, particularly along the border regions, hurt the Confederate war machine.[38] Many citizens in the south did not own slaves, and they resided in border regions far from the plantation slaveholders and held a completely different view of the sovereignty issue. Freehling feels their leanings to the Union, and their agendas influenced the outcomes of the war. At the heart of these issues are often women, left at home, while soldiers go off to fight for the Confederacy, often they were not able to fight the Union. Freehling argues that Southerners undermined the Confederacy when they are unionist sympathies overruled their geography, they did not feel that the issue of slavery was worth the bloodshed, there were decidedly different views from the people of different economic means. The slaves also had power and were able to aid the Union their ways, as well as attempt to escape to the North and join the contraband camps, the army, or perform labor for the government.[39] Conversely, he feels the slaves made a huge impact on the issues of the Confederate war effort, again, these things centered in the homes away from overseeing eyes and were watched over by women.

Freehling is considered one of the leading historians in his field, and this book was written as a response in many ways to the previous scholarship of such historians as Gary Gallagher. At a time when new and different theories were coming to the forefront, Freehling puts this book in context with the belief that the Union was the defining factor for the loss of the South in the war. Many at this time were still attempting to argue for states rights as a causal factor in the war, but as Freehling demonstrates he believes that the Union won by strategic use of the land, border regions, their military machine, and sheer numbers. He does offer the solution that is possibly arming the slaves would help, but I find this controversial at best. As Dr. Smith said, no slave was going to fight for slavery to continue; they would take that gun and uniform and report to duty with the Union army already holding their rifle from the Confederates.[40]

Class conflict is examined in many ways through primary and secondary source materials and governmental and court records that offer the reasons for the mastery of his subject, along with the likes of Gallagher, Blight, and Faust. Though not specifically a conversation on women, the events and extenuating circumstances of the issues surrounding women made this a crucial part of a women’s Civil War historiography. As time has passed, his observances have been borne out by other historians work in the field; it is the overwhelming theory of most Civil War historians that the war was not lost by unsympathetic women at home, begging for their men to return. The war was lost due to superior Northern forces, resources, capital, infrastructure, as well as the belief in what they felt was a righteous position of their fight.

Grant, Susan-Mary, “To Bind Up the Nations Wounds: Women and the American Civil War.” In, The Practice of U.S. Women’s History: Narratives, Intersections, and Dialogues, edited by Kleinberg, S. Jay, Eileen Boris, and Vicki L. Ruiz, eds. New Brunswick, New Jersey; London: Rutgers University Press, 2007. http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.snhu.edu/stable/j.ctt5hhxxp.

In the book, The Practice of U.S. Women’s History: Narratives, Intersections, and Dialogues, specifically Chapter 6, To Bind a Nations Wounds, looks at the women’s history of the Civil War era where nursing is concerned. Susan Grant examines women’s impacts from the Civil War, as it was a defining moment for the country, but in the end, women would be the ones still without any rights at all. How can America come to terms with such a defining moment of liberty, when the fact of the matter is that many were not free and would stay that way for years and decades to come, freedom passing them over.[41] Grant argues that women saw their entire world’s change and therefor the war was just as much their business, as well as that of men. She feels that women met this wartime era headfirst and responded in kind by taking on entirely new gender roles and moving beyond their social, political, and economic structures, that despite the failures of war and officials to honor them with their rights, they still had a hand in this great nation fight for Union.[42]

Grant’s work, like others of us in the field of women’s history, wish to see the roles of women and their actions during war added to the historiography in more meaningful ways. We must demonstrate the avenues and ways women moved to help not only the war effort, but their countries as well. Many women were responsible for vast changes in health care procedures, health, and hunger advocacy, aiding the refugees of the war, aiding the war effort from work or home, they were forced to endure the war years. She joins the ranks of distinguished historians before her that have paved the way for women’s histories to examine the bigger picture of women’s wartime experiences. However, that said, she feels that even at the point of 2007 and this work, that more scholarship is needed. She feels that she and others in her field, such as Faust for instance, can do more to shed the light of women’s experiences so that we may fully understand their reasons for their impacts. [43]

Grant joins forces with leading minds such as Blight, whom she often quotes, saying that he echoed the sentiments of the nation, and still called attention to the women, but more needs to be done to push this valuable scholarship to the forefront. Grant believes, among others such as Hyde, Fields, and Forbes, that to understand why women were excluded will help us to understand Reconstruction, the Civil War, and what healing means.[44] These scholars are setting the tone for the future of women’s history, particularly in the conversation and historiography that is the American Civil War experience.

Harrison, Kimberly. “The Rhetoric of Rebel Women: Civil War Diaries and Confederate Persuasion,” Southern Illinois University Press, 2013, ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/lib/snhu-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1402889.

Kimberly Harrison has analyzed hundreds of elite Southern Confederacy women’s diaries to understand the nature of the women and the rhetorical responses, chiefly through journals, letters, diaries, and other means of outright societal or Unionist protest. The Rhetoric of Rebel Women: Civil War Diaries and Confederate Persuasion, in another book in the same vein as the previous work by Susan Mary Grant, examines the issues that befell the women of the South, particularly that of the elite society of the Confederacy. These women took unusual steps to make their voices heard and through painstaking research, Harrison helps us hear these women’s rhetoric and understand their innermost feelings that were at the core of the rhetorical responses they gave.[45]

The book is an impressive work that immediately gives voice to women that historians had not been aware of formerly, but it gives us a window into the reasons why the women felt this way. As other scholars have noted in the past too, the experience of the American people cannot be understood due to the lacking information regarding these vast segments of women forgotten in time by history. Certain historians, such as Harrison, Grant, and Faust, look at the uniquely feminine southern response, we understand so little about how those thoughts and staunch feelings of wartime rhetoric, historians are now trying to give a fuller picture of the War. Both Faust and Harrison feel that valuable insights into the Confederate mindset exist and we can figure out a deeper level of knowledge by examining these women closer. Many fell in love with Mary Chestnut and her accounts of the war in Ken Burns: The Civil War, this is an extension of that work that moves beyond one wealthy elite woman’s voice, to hundreds.[46] Truly taking Mary’s voice to the next level by adding a chorus of her peers, and examining the vast domestic, social, political, and economic facets of their lives.

As noted, Ken Burns helped us to discover the written works of Mary Chestnut, to follow her perception of life during the war, we can thank later historians who are taking that work further into the areas of Southern life, women’s history, and Civil War Confederate rhetoric.[47] Faust also has extensively examined the women of the Confederate aristocracy and their impact on the war effort, their lives beyond the stereotype of what she called the Scarlett O’Hara Southern Belle’s.[48] Blight warns us that not understanding the women’s experience during these periods was a grave injustice and meant we did not fully understand the war or reconstruction.[49] As we uncover more and more of these amazing diaries, we can put one more piece into the puzzle of the American Confederate South. By bringing more of these older collections that have not been cataloged out into the light of day we are finally making a difference in the landscape of the American Civil War documentation and theory. Our views on the causation of the war have changed due to more and more source materials coming to the surface of scholarship for critically analyzing and the creation of a cohesive, and moving closer to, an inclusive history for all, including women.

Hyde, Anne Farrar, “Empires, Nations, and Families: a New History of the North American West, 1800-1860,” 2012, New York: Ecco Press.

Anne Farrar Hyde, author of, Empires, Nations, and Families: a New History of the North American West, 1800-1860, creates a narrative of the American West in the early 1800s that clearly demonstrates the importance of the region on the formation of the country, and its entry into the war, as abolitionists waged war in the West.[50] What she truly does best is the creation of an epic tale in which women are the actors, a truly inclusive history examining the issues that faced women on the frontier leading up to the Civil War thus giving us a glimpse into their thinking. The horrors of the West were becoming a theatre for the National problems as massacres over slavery and state sovereignty continued unabated for a decade and then into the war itself. From 1857 to through 1864, blood would come to the West in torrents, the Mormons were bent on protecting their stake their as they invaded Indian territory and began what is akin to a slaughter of a peaceful people, Native Americans were pushed repeatedly off their lands, and abolitionists brought more fire to the storm of the West.[51] At the center of it all is women in the frontier lands attempting to keep their homes and families intact and safe from harm when building an empire, forging new territories.

Of particular note is all the time and attention spent to giving new and old source materials close examinations using critical thinking, she deftly weaves the tale of the abolitionist spread in Part III of her narrative, discussing the brutality and conflict arising over slavery and political balance. [52]This work helps us to understand the trials and tribulations leading up to the war. The issues on the frontier after the Missouri Compromise became volatile as the debate and war over slavery began to seem as it was stepping into the forefront and refusing to leave. Men like John Brown brought the fight to slaveholders in the region, and the conversations around secession grew heated and bloodier by the year until the war broke out. The issues in the frontier were the leading factors that stressed a nation into war over slavery and the debate of how to handle the future of states’ rights in association to slavery. As noted by Dr. Smith, slavery was endemic in everything; it was bleeding into the fabric of everything that was America, its politics, its policies, economies, and life.

This book is in a class of itself, sharing the few books in this work that dealt solely with the frontier, yet as David Blight, Shelby Foote, James McPherson, and others all agree, is that the arguments leading up to the war about slavery, the brutality of the debate and massacre’s, was already reaching a fevered warlike pitch. McPherson notes that the growing issues with the bleeding of Kansas would be a leading cause in catapulting slavery and the issues of state’s rights to the fore.[53] Faust, Grant, Forbes, and the rest all share one thing, they are bringing these women’s stories to light, and they are helping us understand the hidden facets of the American Civil War that we did not know previously. Historians, therefore, must continue to work tirelessly to bring new archives to light, access new materials, and continue to bring forth more dialog that helps us to understand the experience of these remarkable women. Most of them would count themselves as quite unremarkable, but they have all enriched our lives and our historical knowledge through their letters and journals.

Johnston, Carolyn Ross. Cherokee Women in Crisis: Trail of Tears, Civil War, and Allotment, 1838-1907. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003, Accessed April 16, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central.

In, Cherokee Women in Crisis: Trail of Tears, Civil War, and Allotment, 1838-1907, historian Carolyn Ross Johnston joins the growing movement to give voice to Native Americans, beyond that to women specifically during the removal period, the Civil War, and the allotment period.[54] Johnston feels that removal, war, and allotment caused Cherokee women’s gender relations to suffer as the family suffered, societal pressures changed the Cherokee gender concept to suit American society. She argues the further the family unit was destabilized, and the nation as a whole, women’s status, roles, and experiences drastically changed from their traditional view. She examines the way women’s roles slipped from positions of power and authority to subservience to their men, and suddenly a change in the idea of gendered work in general, a view that aligned the Cherokee nation to the society of white Americans, in theory, reality was different.[55]

Johnston recognizes the need to add women to the scholarship record, but in order to give an inclusive history of the event, the Cherokee, removed from GA must be examined for their centrality to the conflict and impact to their women. In 2003, there were the beginnings of a vibrant school of historiography on Native American Indians, though as with most history, the women have been left out yet again, only now to start having their stories told. Works such as this give us an extra layer of context for our historiographical conversation on women during the war, these women were at the center of a power push to remove them from their homes, only to find more bloodshed in the West. As we move further into today’s scholarship more and more, historians are taking the mantle of the female cause. This work specifically will add a layer of context and inclusivity to this research on women, but further on this research into Native American Studies and Frontier history. As Patricia Limerick reminds us, we must not forget the impact of these women, and their blood which was shed along the way to a unified Union and Western Frontier.[56]

This book is well paired with historians such as Patricia Limerick, and specifically Anne Hyde’s work on the frontier and families in the region as she includes the voices of all women, settlers, immigrants, Native American, and African American alike.[57] Inclusive history is not just a pretty sentiment or idea; it is a need in American scholarship and historiography because many have been left out in the cold as if they never impacted their tiny corner of the world or war. An inclusive conversation means the Native American women, rarely given a voice, must be heard as well, this war and its implications, causations, and reconstruction historiography must include all women, all voices, male or female. As we begin to change our methodology and the ways we examine Native American culture, we can help heal the wounds in our nation from our experience; it is through more dialog and scholarship that we will finally achieve a cohesive Native American voice in our American history.

McDevitt, Theresa. 2003. Women and the American Civil War: An Annotated Bibliography. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Dr. McDevitt is the government’s document librarian at Indiana for the University of Pennsylvania, and she has compiled a comprehensive bibliography as it existed to date in 2003. In, Women and the American Civil War: An Annotated Bibliography, she aims to compile a full annotated bibliography for women of the Civil War, what can be a tedious and cumbersome task to move beyond the norm of documentation.[58] Dr. McDevitt can collect a group of academic source materials and summaries of their key data, placing it in one comprehensive location, at the time of the work, data uploading was in its infancy, and this book was groundbreaking.

A must for any Civil War historiography is to seek other cogent historiographies, of which in women’s civil war history, we are finally starting to see a rise. For a great deal of time, there was only such as works as Mary Chestnut’s diary to fall back on, and there was a need to help research progress beyond the bounds and confines of previous technologies. As we see the library and archival sciences technology take more leaps and bounds, these types of historiographies become more and inclusive of unique and new materials than ever before. In the context of the early 2000’s we see quite a strong rise in scholarship that is due in part to groundbreaking historians, but also archivists and librarians, and historians will benefit greatly! The overview has a relevance to the lives of women in the Civil War like few other historiographical overviews; this coupled with her painstakingly researched collection gives us added a layer of dimensions across a broad range of lenses.[59]

Historians share a similar desire to share the voices of women that rarely get heard, the immigrant, indigenous, and slave alike. Dr. McDevitt is in a class of her own with this comprehensive annotated bibliography, the only of its kind in this historiography. There is finally a movement to create full historiography and conversation on the Civil War, and the Western Frontier, that is including the voices of women, once forgotten, their accomplishments credited to men or downplayed throughout history. These scholars are all working to change that fact. As Limerick noted above, the West was a place of the earliest conflicts of the war and women witnessed it taking place and changing their lives forever.

McPherson, James M., “Battle Cry for Freedom,” Oxford University Press, 1988.

James McPherson is one of the top scholars of the field of Civil War History, and his work, Battle Cry for Freedom: The Civil War Era, is perhaps one of the best books available on the subject of the war and was produced by none other than Oxford University Press and still, twenty years later, is considered a masterpiece today.[60] This work is painstakingly researched using all manner of source materials to create a rich narrative, full of intimate and public events alike. His precision lends his narrative a realistic feel and gives a balanced accounting of the war and how it affected the United States and covered the entirety of the war. His point is that the war itself changed with the emancipation proclamation, from a war of states’ rights and unionism to war for the emancipation of an entire race of people, the freeing of the nation from chattel servitude to a true government, by the people, for the people: all people.[61] McPherson’s goal is to complete a modern synthesis of the events leading up the war on the frontier over slavery, the war years themselves, and into the reconstruction era.

This book is one of the best defining books on the war obtainable, and it serves to give an accessible and modern accounting of the Civil War. This book brings all the prevailing theories that McPherson himself holds dear and takes the arena into situations that demand the humanistic view of life during the Civil War. Though written in the 80s, it is today still one of the defining books on the events that shaped our nation into who and what we are today. Through the years this book has been the cornerstone of many Civil War historiographies for its hands down expertise, readability, and skillful use of source material. When do leading minds think back to historians who have influenced them? McPherson is one of the best in his field, and men like Blight and Foner will always say that McPherson is a great impact. This work sets the bar for the field in its thoroughness, it graces graduate reading lists year after year, and decade and after decade helping us to better understand the war, but to also better understand what McPherson noted regarding the cult of domesticity, and of the cult of true womanhood’s response to the issues of war on women.[62]

James McPherson is hands down one of the top minds in the Civil War Conversation and his work, Battle Cry of Freedom, is still a definitive work on the work, bringing its social, political, military, and domestic spheres together in one place. Down the line, other historians join the ranks in sharing the top honors of the most influential thinkers of the time, historians that have set the bar higher for the rest wishing to put forth viable, and new Civil War scholarship. David Blight makes no bones about the fact that McPherson is an influence on his work and is also a key player in Civil War academia. Foner is another man who is work needs little introduction and who holds McPherson in great esteem as well. These men all assert that in the west the battle over the debate of slavery would spurn a war that would define our nation, but they all recognize, though not necessarily being women’s history scholars, all recognize the impact of these women on the historiography of the Civil War and therefore included in this work.

Schultz, Jane E., “Nurse as Icon: Florence Nightingale’s Impact on Women in the American Civil War.” In, The Civil War as Global Conflict: Transnational Meanings of the American Civil War, edited by Gleeson David T. and Lewis Simon, 235-52. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 2014.

This work, Nurse as Icon: Florence Nightingale’s Impact on Women in the American Civil War, appears in the book, The Civil War as Global Conflict: Transnational Meanings of the American Civil War, and is a recent work of scholarship adding to our Civil War knowledge of women. The essay on Nightingale is a critical examination of the ways she impacted the field of medicine, specifically nursing, as well as women’s roles in America, and battlefield hospitals.[63] Nightingale inspired not only women to a new gender role, or rather extended gender role of nursing, into new advances in medicine, hospital operations, and the creation of a tangible way that women could take part in the service to their country, their side, in the Civil War.[64] The work examines a woman’s whose influence changed the course of nursing for an entire segment of the population that had never before had access to these types of positions outside the home, changing women’s experiences forever.

Nursing has been a featured area of study of Civil War historians who are seeking to explain the missing part of our history by filling in the women’s historiographical record. Nursing itself was one of the main ways that Civil War women were able to help the war effort, and this would see women leaving their homes for outside work, sometimes for the first time. To that end, we have seen an excellent breadth of scholarship that has impacted this field. Not only does it encompass the ever-changing aspects of women’s roles, but for women taking part in the process of caring for soldiers, it would permeate their entire world perception and that of the medical field in general. The work, completed in 2014, has the extra added advantage of current documentation on the issues faces women attempting to enter battlefield hospitals to the book itself examining all facets of the Civil War and its transatlantic impacts.

Ken Burns introduced us to women such as Dorthea Dix, Louisa May Alcott, and to their male counterpart, Walt Whitman, during their times in the Civil War hospitals, this was the beginning of America’s reckoning with the women of the Civil War in way that popular America could grasp and become attached.[65] All came to the field through patriotic reasons of their own that were deeply personal, similarly to Ms. Nightingale, and all of them introduced us to the horrors of war, but the women, they saw a faction of society not open to them previously.[66] As with others on this list, Burns, McDevitt, Blanton, Hyde, Harrison, and Faust have contributed so much to the historiographical conversation that is women in the Civil War. Blight, McPherson, and the rest will all vouch for the importance of understanding the female experience at war, and what is not more intrinsic to that ends that of the Civil War nurse, homed in the image and procedure of Florence Nightingale making this a crucial piece of material.

---

• ^{[1] James M. McPherson, “Battle Cry for Freedom; The Civil War Era” Oxford University Press, 34-36.}
• ^{[2] David Blight, “David Blight on the Civil War in American Memory, Part 1.” Harvard University Press: YouTube, 2011, January 14, 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_7nDwCfNuE.}
• ^{[3] DeAnne Blanton and Lauren M. Cook, They Fought like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War, Stroud: Sutton, 2005, 218-220.}
• ^{[4] Ibid, 218-220.}
• ^{[5] DeAnne Blanton and Lauren M. Cook, They Fought like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War, Stroud: Sutton, 2005, 210.}
• ^{[6] Ibid, 210.}
• ^{[7] David. Blight, PhD., “Dr. David Blight, The Civil War and Reconstruction Yale Lecture Series.” Yale Courses at Yale University. YouTube. Accessed April 12, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/user/YaleCourses/search?query=Blight.}
• ^{[8] James M. McPherson, “Battle Cry for Freedom; The Civil War Era” Oxford University Press, 1988, 34.}
• ^{[9] David. Blight, PhD., “Dr. David Blight, The Civil War and Reconstruction Yale Lecture Series.” Yale Courses at Yale University. YouTube. Accessed April 12, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/user/YaleCourses/search?query=Blight.}
• ^{[10] David. Blight, PhD., “Dr. David Blight, The Civil War and Reconstruction Yale Lecture Series.” Yale Courses at Yale University. YouTube. Accessed April 12, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/user/YaleCourses/search?query=Blight.}
• ^{[11] Ibid.}
• ^{[12] Ibid.}
• ^{[13] David. Blight, PhD., “Dr. David Blight, The Civil War and Reconstruction Yale Lecture Series.” Yale Courses at Yale University. YouTube. Accessed April 12, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/user/YaleCourses/search?query=Blight.}
• ^{[14] James M. McPherson, “Battle Cry for Freedom; The Civil War Era” Oxford University Press, 1988.}
• ^{[15] David. Blight, PhD., “Dr. David Blight, The Civil War and Reconstruction Yale Lecture Series.” Yale Courses at Yale University. YouTube. Accessed April 12, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/user/YaleCourses/search?query=Blight.}
• ^{[16] David. Blight, PhD., “Dr. David Blight, The Civil War and Reconstruction Yale Lecture Series.” Yale Courses at Yale University. YouTube. Accessed April 12, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/user/YaleCourses/search?query=Blight.}
• ^{[17] Ken Burns, “Civil War Documentary,” 1990, via: https://www.netflix.com/browse?jbv=70202577&jbp=0&jbr=3.}
• ^{[18] Ken Burns, “Civil War Documentary,” 1990, via: https://www.netflix.com/browse?jbv=70202577&jbp=0&jbr=3.}
• ^{[19] Drew Gilpin Faust, “Mothers of Invention.” Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.}
• ^{[20] David. Blight, PhD., “Dr. David Blight, The Civil War and Reconstruction Yale Lecture Series.” Yale Courses at Yale University. YouTube. Accessed April 12, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/user/YaleCourses/search?query=Blight.}
• ^{[21] Ken Burns, “Civil War Documentary.” 1990, via: https://www.netflix.com/browse?jbv=70202577&jbp=0&jbr=3.}
• ^{[22] Kimberly Harrison. The Rhetoric of Rebel Women: Civil War Diaries and Confederate Persuasion, Southern Illinois University Press, 2013, ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/lib/snhu-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1402889.}
• ^{[23] Drew Gilpin Faust, “This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War.” New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012, xviii.}
• ^{[24] Drew Gilpin Faust, “This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War.” New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012.}
• ^{[25] Ibid.}
• ^{[26] Ibid.}
• ^{[27] Ibid.}
• ^{[28] David. Blight, PhD., “Dr. David Blight, The Civil War and Reconstruction Yale Lecture Series.” Yale Courses at Yale University. YouTube. Accessed April 12, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/user/YaleCourses/search?query=Blight. Homefronts and Battlefronts Lecture episode.}
• ^{[29] Ibid.}
• ^{[30] Eric Foner, “A Short History of the Reconstruction, 1863-1877,” Harper Collins Publishing, New York, NY, 1988, xxiv.}
• ^{[31] Ibid, xxx.}
• ^{[32] Eric Foner, “A Short History of the Reconstruction, 1863-1877,” Harper Collins Publishing, New York, NY, 1988, 410.}
• ^{[33] Ibid, xxx.}
• ^{[34] James M. McPherson, “Battle Cry for Freedom; The Civil War Era” Oxford University Press, 1988.}
• ^{[35] Frank Smith, “Race and the Civil War: Healing the Wounds of History.” n.d. C-Span: North-South, Black-White; A Special Program of the American Civil War Sesquicentennial. Accessed April 25, 2019. https://www.c-span.org/video/?303138-1/race-civil-war.}
• ^{[36] Ella Forbes, African American Women During the Civil War, Routledge, 1998. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/lib/snhu-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1111772.}
• ^{[37] Ella Forbes, African American Women During the Civil War, Routledge, 1998. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/lib/snhu-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1111772.}
• ^{[38] William W. Freehling, “The South vs. the South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War.” New York: Oxford University Press. 2002.}
• ^{[39] Ibid.}
• ^{[40] Frank Smith, “Race and the Civil War: Healing the Wounds of History.” n.d. C-Span: North-South, Black-White; A Special Program of the American Civil War Sesquicentennial. Accessed April 25, 2019. https://www.c-span.org/video/?303138-1/race-civil-war.}
• ^{[41] Susan-Mary Grant, “To Bind Up the Nations Wounds: Women and the American Civil War.” In, The Practice of U.S. Women’s History: Narratives, Intersections, and Dialogues, edited by Kleinberg, S. Jay, Eileen Boris, and Vicki L. Ruiz, eds. New Brunswick, New Jersey; London: Rutgers University Press, 2007, http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.snhu.edu/stable/j.ctt5hhxxp.}
• ^{[42] Ibid.}
• ^{[43] Ibid}
• ^{[44] Ibid.}
• ^{[45] Kimberly Harrison, The Rhetoric of Rebel Women: Civil War Diaries and Confederate Persuasion, Southern Illinois University Press, 2013, ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/lib/snhu-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1402889.}
• ^{[46] Ken Burns, “Civil War Documentary.” Public Broadcasting Systems; PBS, 1990, via: https://www.netflix.com/browse?jbv=70202577&jbp=0&jbr=3.}
• ^{[47] Ken Burns, “Civil War Documentary.” Public Broadcasting Systems; PBS, 1990, via: https://www.netflix.com/browse?jbv=70202577&jbp=0&jbr=3.}
• ^{[48] Kimberly Harrison, The Rhetoric of Rebel Women: Civil War Diaries and Confederate Persuasion, Southern Illinois University Press, 2013, ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/lib/snhu-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1402889.}
• ^{[48] Ken Burns, “Civil War Documentary.” Public Broadcasting Systems; PBS, 1990, via: https://www.netflix.com/browse?jbv=70202577&jbp=0&jbr=3.}
• ^{[49] David. Blight, PhD., “Dr. David Blight, The Civil War and Reconstruction Yale Lecture Series.” Yale Courses at Yale University. YouTube. Accessed April 12, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/user/YaleCourses/search?query=Blight.}
• ^{[50] Anne Farrar Hyde, “Empires, Nations, and Families: a New History of the North American West, 1800-1860,” 2012, New York: Ecco Press.}
• ^{[51] Anne Farrar Hyde, “Empires, Nations, and Families: a New History of the North American West, 1800-1860,” 2012, New York: Ecco Press.484-485.}
• ^{[52] Ibid.}
• ^{[53] James M. McPherson, “Battle Cry for Freedom; The Civil War Era” Oxford University Press, 1988.}
• ^{[54] Carolyn Ross Johnston, Cherokee Women in Crisis: Trail of Tears, Civil War, and Allotment, 1838-1907. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003, Accessed April 16, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central.}
• ^{[55] Carolyn Ross Johnston, Cherokee Women in Crisis: Trail of Tears, Civil War, and Allotment, 1838-1907. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003, Accessed April 16, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central.}
• ^{[56] Patricia Nelson Limerick, “Who Won the Civil War?” 2013. The New York Times. The New York Times, July 2, 2013. https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/07/02/who-won-the-civil-war.}
• ^{[57] Anne Farrar Hyde, “Empires, Nations, and Families: a New History of the North American West, 1800-1860,” 2012, New York: Ecco Press.}
• ^{[58] Theresa McDevitt, Women and the American Civil War: An Annotated Bibliography. Westport, CT: Praeger.}
• ^{[59] Theresa McDevitt, Women and the American Civil War: An Annotated Bibliography. Westport, CT: Praeger. Overview.}
• ^{[60] James M. McPherson, “Battle Cry for Freedom; The Civil War Era” Oxford University Press, 1988.}
• ^{[61] Louis P. Masur, “The Civil War: A Concise History.” Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.}
• ^{[62] James M. McPherson, “Battle Cry for Freedom; The Civil War Era” Oxford University Press, 1988, 34.}
• ^{[63] Jane E. Schultz, “Nurse as Icon: Florence Nightingale’s Impact on Women in the American Civil War,” 235-52. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 2014.}
• ^{[64] Ibid.}
• ^{[65] Ken Burns, “Civil War Documentary.” Public Broadcasting Systems; PBS, 1990, via: https://www.netflix.com/browse?jbv=70202577&jbp=0&jbr=3.}
• ^{[66] Jane E. Schultz, “Nurse as Icon: Florence Nightingale’s Impact on Women in the American Civil War,” 235-52. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 2014.}