This lecture podcast was recorded for Dr. Abby Mullen’s HIST 390: The Digital Past – War in the Antebellum United States in the spring of 2020. It provides a short overview of how wars were experienced beyond the grand strategy meetings and frontlines of combat in the antebellum United States. From Abigail Adams in the American Revolution to Albert Cashier in the Civil War, it explores the different roles women and people assigned female at birth could take when they found themselves in times of war.
Full Transcript
Weymouth, Massachusetts
June 16th, 1775
“I set down to write to you a Monday, but really could not compose myself sufficiently: the anxiety I sufferd from not hearing one syllable from you for more than five weeks; and the new distress ariseing from the arrival of recruits agitated me more than I have been since the never to be forgotten 14 of April.”
“Perhaps, the very next Letter I write will inform you that I am driven away from our, yet quiet cottage. Necessity will oblige Gage to take some desperate steps. We are told for Truth, that he is now Eight thousand strong. We live in continual expectation of alarms. Courage I know we have in abundance, conduct I hope we shall not want, but powder – where shall we get a sufficient supply? I wish we may not fail there. Every Town is fill’d with the distressed inhabitants of Boston – our House among others is deserted, and by this time like enough made use of as a Barrack.”
“The cry for pins is so great that what we used to Buy for 7.6 are now 20 Shillings and not to be had for that. A bundle contains 6 thousand for which I used to give a Dollor, but if you can procure them for 50 [shillings] or 3 pound, pray let me have them.”
“I hope we shall see each other again and rejoice together in happier Days. The little ones are well, and send Duty to Pappa.”
– Excerpts from a letter from Abigail Adams to her husband, John
Over the course of our semester, we’ve talked about a lot of different wars and a lot of different people, but today I wanted to talk about some of the people who have gotten less attention. Most of the people we’ve talked about this semester have been white, male and mostly wealthy. But war generally doesn’t care much what your gender, race or class is. Everyone experiences war. In fact, it’s often minorities and marginalized people who take the brunt of the effects of war.
When writing her letter to her husband, Abigail Adams wasn’t on the front lines of the American Revolution. She never fought on the battlefield. But she was nonetheless greatly affected by the war. Remember that exercise we did in class in the Before Times where we talked about the costs of war? Yeah, I know, it feels like it was roughly a million years ago. Adams mentions a lot of the things we mentioned that day. Anxiety for her family, worry that she would have to flee her home, shortages of essential supplies – Despite the fact that Abigail Adams never set foot on the battlefield, the war made its presence known in her life, and she was better off than many others. She had a quiet cottage outside of Boston to escape to and money for food to feed her children. She was free, unlike the many enslaved black people who had to make choices when the war came to their homes. Abigail didn’t have to think about what would happen to her and her family if her master fled nor did she have to contemplate the dangerous opportunity to flee with her children to freedom behind British lines.
Women are often portrayed as helpless, passive victims of war. Their virtue and untouchability can be the catalyst for war. The perception of women as being fragile flowers who need protecting is an extremely pervasive idea around war. But women actually played critical roles in war, both within and outside the bounds of military life. Today, I’d like to talk about some of these women and those who were perceived as women who played active roles in war.
In the antebellum period, individuals assigned female at birth, that is, someone who has been perceived by society to be female, generally based on their anatomy, weren’t permitted to fight in the military. Women weren’t allowed to join the United States military until much later. It wasn’t until the 20th century that Loretta Walsh became the first enlisted woman when she enlisted in the Navy during World War I, but it wasn’t until after World War II that women were made a permanent part of the military. Even then, women were barred from direct combat roles until very recently. So, what could roles could they play in war?
Many women aided the war effort by doing things adjacent to the military: laundry, cooking, nursing, or in some cases, spying.
There were many male spies, but women made good spies precisely because they were women. They were invisible and easily dismissed.
Lydia Darragh was a Philadelphia Quaker who became a spy for the Continental Army during the American Revolution. As Quakers, Lydia and her family were pacifists; many Quakers were neutral during the war. So, in 1777, when the British army took and occupied Philadelphia, the Darraghs were able to stay, despite secretly supporting the Patriot cause. British General Sir William Howe established his camp across the street from the Darraghs. If that wasn’t already a great opportunity for spying, as it got colder, the British officers demanded use of the Darraghs’ home for meetings. Lydia sent her youngest children to relatives outside the city. By hiding in a closet during one of the officers’ meetings, Lydia discovered their plan for a surprise attack on Washington’s troops at Whitemarsh.
To warn Washington, Lydia used her role as a homemaker to receive a pass from Howe to visit her children and obtain flour from the Frankford mill. Once past the patrols, she met with an American officer to pass along the information before returning to Philadelphia with her flour. Her message warned Washington in time to prepare his troops. The British never found who had leaked their plan. They questioned Mrs. Darragh, but believed her when she said the family had been asleep during their meeting.
Women spies were not isolated to the American Revolution.
Pauline Cushman was a spy in the Civil War for the Union. She was an actress who was dared by some Confederate officers in Louisville, Kentucky, to make a toast to the Confederacy onstage. After consulting with the local Union authorities, she made the toast, thus ruining her reputation as an actress but cementing her position of trust with the local Confederate officers. She used that trust to spy on them. She eventually moved to Nashville to continue her spying. She was caught there and sentenced to death. But while she was awaiting execution, the Union overtook Shelbyville where she was being held, and she was spared. Cushman was granted an honorary commission of Major in the army after the war, and she toured with P.T. Barnum’s American Museum, giving lectures about her experiences in the war.
Though stories like those of Darragh and Cushman are exciting and almost glamorous, that wasn’t the reality for most women who took an active role in war in the antebellum period. For many, war was just hard work.
For most of the wars of the antebellum period, a limited number of women were permitted to live within the military encampments. They performed various jobs for the soldiers, including cooking, laundry, and nursing. These camp followers tended to be poorer, lower class women, forced into military life in some capacity because they had nowhere else to turn if their husband or provider had gone to war. Unlike Abigail Adams who was able to stay home in Massachusetts, these women labored for the army as a means of subsistence. They were paid for their services, either by the army or by the soldiers they laundered or cooked for. Contrary to popular belief, camp followers were not prostitutes and most were related or married to men serving in the army. George Washington actually felt pretty strongly about that. He needed women supporting his troops, but he didn’t want prostitutes spreading venereal diseases.
Phyllis George was one such camp follower who worked as a washerwoman for the British army during the American Revolution. She and her husband David were black loyalists. During the war, David worked for the British Army as a provisioner and butcher. Phyllis worked as a washerwoman, doing laundry for British soldiers. Many black loyalists fled enslavement during the Revolutionary War. The British offered freedom to slaves belonging to patriots in exchange for services in the British Army. After the war, if they were lucky enough to survive camp diseases and maintain their freedom after the British defeat, many black loyalists evacuated alongside the British army. They scattered across the remaining British empire, many settling in Nova Scotia or Sierra Leone. Phyllis, David and there three children were among them.
We don’t know a lot about the vast majority of the women who worked for the armies of the antebellum wars. But we do know about some of the more famous nurses, especially in the later wars. One, named Maria Josefa Zozaya, was a Mexican women who nursed both American and Mexican wounded soldiers on the fields during the Mexican American War. At great personal risk, she brought food and water to troops on both sides. While tending to a wounded American soldier, she was struck by a bullet and killed. She wasn’t the only nurse to ignore combatant status and focus only on injury.
Perhaps the most famous nurse in American history is Clara Barton. A copyist for the federal government, she started delivering supplies to Union troops when the Civil War broke out. She ended up tending the sick as well as resupplying the troops, and she was at every major battlefield in Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina. She became known as the Angel of the Battlefield. Though she never received any formal training, her work as a nurse during the Civil War was the basis for her founding of the American Red Cross.
Barton was not attached to any man in the military. But many of the women who took active roles in the military during wartime did so because their husbands were there too. There are many reports of women taking their husband’s place on an artillery gun, for instance, when he was killed or wounded. Have you ever heard of Molly Pitcher from the American Revolution? There are so many stories about women doing just this that historians can’t actually agree exactly who Molly Pitcher was. The best candidates, however, are Mary Ludwig Hayes and Margaret Corbin.
Individuals assigned female at birth were not permitted to join the military. That didn’t stop all of them from doing so anyway. These individuals donned masculine clothing, thereby passing as men in society, in order to join the military. Some were discovered almost immediately, but others stayed in the service for months or even years. Dressing as a man came with a significant number of privileges, including masculine occupations (like soldiering), better pay, greater mobility and safety. Therefore, not all assigned female at birth individuals took on masculine identities because they were trans or gender-non-conforming.
For example, Elizabeth Newcom joined the army as Bill Newcom at the start of the Mexican War in order to be with her lover. She marched all the way to Mexico territory before being discovered, where she was eventually mustered out of the army. She successfully sued the federal government later for the land promised to all people who enlisted to fight in the war.
Others cited duty to their country. During the American Revolution, Deborah Sampson enlisted in the Continental Army as Robert Shurtliff and served as a light infantryman in the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment. During their year and a half of service, Sampson was in several battles, including Tarrytown and New York. Sampson’s sex was discovered when they fell ill. Despite the discovery, Sampson received an honorable discharge from the Army and returned to civilian life without reprisals. Sampson’s memoirs made sense of their subject’s flaunting of gender norms by citing Sampson’s overwhelming patriotic zeal.
For yet others, military service did provide an opportunity to express their gender identity. The military provided solid employment and an outlet for patriotic zeal, but it also provided an opportunity for non-normative gender expression. Uniforms could easily conceal the biological sex that had led to their female assignment. The military also provided mobility and anonymity. The individual could leave the area where they were known as their assigned gender and start fresh with a new identity among strangers. It’s difficult for historians to parse exactly how people in the past felt about their gender. In most cases, we don’t have statements from them. Some scholars, for instance, have maintained Sampson’s image as a ciswoman; others have celebrated Sampson’s memory as a trans narrative.
The Civil War gives us more than 400 documented cases of assigned female at birth individuals fighting as men. Many of these people returned to civilian life as women after the war, thus proving that women have been serving in the US military far longer than they have been permitted to. However, some did not. The most prominent case is Albert Cashier. Born Jennie Hodgers, Cashier enlisted in the Union army at age eighteen. He fought in at least 40 battles as part of the Army of the Tennessee under Ulysses S. Grant, including the siege at Vicksburg. After the war, he continued to live as a man and received a full military pension. It was only in 1910 that Cashier’s sex was discovered by a doctor whom he swore to secrecy. Later on, when he was institutionalized with dementia, he was forcibly treated as a woman. However, when he died in 1915, he was buried in his military uniform under the name Albert Cashier. War was grueling and harrowing, but it could also provide opportunities to transition for gender-non-conforming individuals like Cashier.
War affects everyone. Death, injury, disease, shortages – all of these were felt by the people who experienced the wars of the antebellum United States, whether they were on the battlefield or the home front. Usually thought of as a “man’s business,” war is nothing of the sort. Whether working undercover as spies, laboring in military encampments as camp followers, helping to save lives as nurses or fighting on the battlefield as soldiers, women and assigned female at birth individuals were vital to the war effort. Their reasons for getting involved were as diverse as they were, but they certainly should never be dismissed as fragile flowers in need of protecting.