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The American Civil War is often referred to as ‘the brothers war’ to symbolize a conflict between the offspring of a singular union. As the story goes, biological and fraternal brothers, separated by ideology or geography, fought for opposing forces during the war. Popular history tends to follow this narrative, marginalizing the contributions of women to nurses, prostitutes, or faithful wives and mothers. This narrative, however quaint, fails to recognize the scores of women on the battlefield as strategic operatives and soldiers. The story is changing, though, as feminist historians unearth countless stories of female militarists and provide images to blur the lines between the perception of martial and maternal.

The problem with the conventional historical conception of the Civil War is its clear division of gender roles. The ‘male as fighter, female as caretaker’ dichotomy creates a dynamic that outlasts the conflict itself, misshaping collective memory. Elizabeth Kirkland Cahill reports that the curators of “Photography and the American Civil War” claim their collection has “defined, and perhaps even helped to unify, the nation via an unrehearsed and unscripted act of collective memory-making,”[1] Yet the collection, which features over two hundred items, includes only one image of a female soldier. The inclusion of a sole image of a female soldier actively works against spreading awareness of women participants in warfare as it leads to the belief that this woman was an exceptional figure, worthy of note above the anonymous women at home or in hospitals. Cahill seems to have taken this belief to heart as she briefly addresses the image of Frances Clayton posing as Jack Williams, but in every other instance she relegates the female role to merely part of the “families left behind.” Cahill exclusively uses male pronouns when referring to soldiers and actively ignores any gender issues posed by the war. While she sheds light on the possibility of female involvement through her brief discussion of Frances Clayton, Cahill promotes the idea that warfare was reserved for men.

Feminist historians are addressing this misclassification of the general female role in the Civil War by uncovering more and more stories of women involved in battle. Amy Dockser Marcus draws attention to the issue with her book review published in The New York Times, briefly outlining Lauren Cook’s book They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War. She states, “Cook and co-author DeAnne Blanton have documented 250 cases of women who fought for the Union or the Confederacy.”[2] She explains that Cook and Blanton “studied regimental histories, archives and unpublished memoirs and diaries provided by the families of the female soldiers,” which flips previous study of the Civil War on its head by focusing on the families of female soldiers instead of families of male soldiers. This article is limited in its brevity, but it at least addresses the forgotten history of female participation and the possibility for the growth of the study, acknowledging, “there were many more women soldiers whose identities were never discovered.”

Elizabeth Leonard delves more deeply into the subject by uncovering stories of female militarists and questioning their motivations. Leonard, as reported by Stephanie McCurry, “works within the dominant narrative in order, presumably, to transform it.”[3] Her book, All the Daring of the Soldier: Women of the Civil War Armies, unearths many formerly unknown cases of women from each side of the Civil War who served “as spies, scouts and especially cross-dressed soldiers.” McCurry quotes Leonard, who said that she studied that subject “in order to shed light on the sheer numbers and on the range of contributions they made to the military organizations and the political causes they served,” effectually changing the misconceptions about female involvement by providing a pool of evidence against the dominant narrative. McCurry further quotes Leonard discussing that many of these women were motivated “not only out of patriotism or to follow loved ones but also because it provided a superior alternative to the limited forms of waged work available to such women in civilian life,” shedding light on the importance their role played in gender politics of the time. Leonard’s book and further McCurry’s review expand on the study of the various roles women played in the conflict and call attention to the need to acknowledge the misconception of the current study of the Civil War.

The North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources presents a comprehensive article constructed for the Civil War Sesquicentennial that tells the story of female soldiers from North Carolina. The article fact checks the legends, explains their motivations and presents pictures where available of the seven known North Carolinian women that fought in the conflict. This complete approach tells the women’s stories without taking liberties to interpret their influence, allowing the reader to use the facts relayed and apply them to further study. The inclusion of pictures, moreover, allows the reader to understand that these women were not merely unique, brutish creatures, but they were loving wives and mothers that cared deeply for the values their nation embodied. This source is the best of the bunch thanks to its painstaking efforts to check records effectively separating life from legend coupled with the inclusion of primary source newspaper clippings and photographs.

The Civil War has long been paraphrased as ‘the brothers war,’ but historians such as Cook, Leonard and those within the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources are successfully changing the narrative through their robust collections of stories and photographs of women who fought alongside men. Thanks to their work, the embellished narrative can now be corrected.

Cahill, Elizabeth Kirkland. “Calling Cards of the Dead: PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR.” Commonweal 141, no. 1 (Jan 10, 2014): 19-22. http://ezproxy.lib.davidson.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/1496059355?accountid=10427.

Marcus, Amy Dockser, “When Janie Came Marching Home,” review of They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War, by Lauren Cook, New York Times, March 23, 2002, Contemporary Women’s Issues.

McCurry, Stephanie, “The sisters’ war?” review of All the Daring of the Soldier: Women of the Civil War Armies,” by Elizabeth Leonard, The Women’s Review, September 21, 2000, Contemporary Women’s Issues.

“Women in the Ranks: Concealed Identities in Civil War Era North Carolina,” North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, accessed April 23, 2015. http://www.nccivilwar150.com/features/women/women.htm

[1] Elizabeth Kirkland Cahill. “Calling Cards of the Dead: PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR.” Commonweal 141, no. 1 (Jan 10, 2014): 19-22. http://ezproxy.lib.davidson.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/1496059355?accountid=10427.

[2] Amy Dockser Marcus, “When Janie Came Marching Home,” review of They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War, by Lauren Cook, New York Times, March 23, 2002, Contemporary Women’s Issues.

[3] Stephanie McCurry, “The sisters’ war?” review of All the Daring of the Soldier: Women of the Civil War Armies,” by Elizabeth Leonard, The Women’s Review, September 21, 2000, Contemporary Women’s Issues.