Question of the Week: Which Civil War-era woman would you like to interview?
If you could go back in time and interview one woman from the Civil War era, who would it be and what would you want to know?
If you could go back in time and interview one woman from the Civil War era, who would it be and what would you want to know?
I would like to talk to the second wife of my great great grandfather. In June of 1864, they lived somewhere near the Trevilians Station battlefield, and according to a story she wrote in later life, they nursed the wounded on both sides near their home. Would love to know how she managed to care for the wounded while caring for her own husband ( 20 years older and not of good health), twin sons three years old, and another baby on the way, how she had the strength to do all of that….
I would like to interview the Moon sisters from Ohio. Cynthia Charlotte “Lottie” Moon and her sister Virginia “Ginnie” Bethel Moon were Confederate spies during the Civil War and had intriguing lives.
I didn’t know of them til your note here. Thanks! One of them left young Ambrose Burnside at the altar. I was wondering, how could two Ohio sisters be reb spies. The oldest sister was born in Virginia, for the record.
Mary Ann “Mother” Bickerdyke — Army nurse, hospital administrator, and veteran’s advocate … her popularity with western theater soldiers earned her the nickname “Mother”… Bickerdyke had little patience for the stultified system of army medical care and would routinely blast through the bureaucracy on behalf of wounded enlisted soldiers.
She was Grant’s chief of nursing during the Vicksburg and Chattanooga campaigns and was Sherman’s “Brigadier Commanding Hospitals” in Georgia … during the Grand Review in June 1865, General Sherman directed her to ride at the head of the XV Corps
I would like to know what Mother Bickerdyke thought about the first organized women’s movement which began in the 1850s.
Ellen Marcy McClellan. We have the letters McClellan wrote her while in command which give insight into his thoughts, but they of course stopped when he went home. I would like to know if in private did McClellan really think Lincoln deliberately caused his failure? Or did he ever concede post war that he grossly overestimated Lee’s forces (and was he embarrassed by that fact)? Did McClellan ever give serious thought to a coup? What did he plan to do if elected president? Would he have considered Confederate independence? And did he really write a letter to Lee after Antietam that implied that the generals should force a settlement on their governments?
Pauline Cushman or Louisa May Alcott.
Dr. Mary Walker
The teenage girls who survived the Brown’s Island Explosion in 1863
The two youngest Lee sisters.
Elizabeth Thorn, Caretaker of the Evergreen Cemetery at Gettysburg
Wonderful choices! Elizabeth Keckley.
Elizabeth Van Lew..
First, my great-great-great grandmother, Mary Francis Chapman of Cave Springs, VA. Secondly, Phoebe Yates Levy Pember, Administrator of Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond.
Marie “French Mary” Tepe, vivandière to the 27th and 114th PA, the latter known as Collis’ Zouaves. She was at the Slaughter Pen of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg, among many other engagements. She was wounded several times in her efforts to care for wounded men on the battle line, and she was awarded the Kearny Cross for her actions. That bravery deserves a fuller story.
So far, no one has picked Mary Todd Lincoln. She is my choice
Harriet Tubman
Assuming that the interview takes place today, for my interviewee resides in the clouds and I may not get up there in the future, it would be Civil War nurse, Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm. The famous photograph of wounded men recovering at Fredericksburg, it shows the kind of men she had charge of in 1864. After the war she became a leader for women’s rights. At the age of 210 years old, now, I’m sure some scenes are burned in her memory that would never fade and I’d like to hear her descriptions. Her letter to the St. Cloud Democrat, June 18, 1863, described her ordeals and included a request for supplies:
“I want whiskey—barrels of whiskey—to wash feet, and thus keep up circulation in wounded knees, legs, thighs, hips. I want a lot of pickles, pickles, pickles, lemons, lemons, lemons, oranges. No well man or woman has a right to a glass of lemonade. We want it all in the hospitals to prevent gangrene….”
Rose O’Neal Greenhow, at a candle lite dinner, as long as I had a fake Union General’s uniform on, with my pockets stuffed with papers marked “Top Secret” and “Eyes Only”?????
Hetty Carey, to see if she was the most beautiful woman in the South. She was also to have been intelligent and witty.
My great-great grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Keasler Dalton Jones. She could tell me:
– about her first husband dying of disease during the war
– how she took care of her own infant daughter and the 2 daughters of my great-great grandfather (her future 2nd husband) from his first marriage
– about the death of her oldest brother from wounds received at 2nd Manassas
– about the death of her younger brother at Ft. Harrison near Richmond
– if she actually drove a 2 horse wagon from Anderson, SC to Richmond, VA to bring my wounded great-great grandfather back home and/or to retrieve her brother’s body
– if her youngest brother ever went to a Union prison camp after he was captured
– and how exactly is David Archer Keasler related to the family!
I’d like to interview any – all – of the women, on either side, who fought in combat during the war.