Author: Karen Abbott
Seventeen-year old Belle Boyd, a tempestuous Virginian, shot a Union soldier in her home and became a courier and spy for the Confederate army. Though the flirtatious Boyd seduced men on both sides of the conflict, she actually had a serious crush on Stonewall Jackson, and on one occasion managed to thwart a Union plan to trap him in the Shenandoah Valley.
Abbott claims that “as many as four hundred women" in both North and South posed and fought as men. Canadian Emma Edmonds was one such woman. Edmonds came from an unhappy home, and finally fled when threatened with an arranged marriage to an elderly neighbor. Disguised as Frank Thompson, medic and mail carrier with Company F, Second Michigan Infantry, she infiltrated enemy lines and eventually witnessed the battle of Antietam, the bloodiest engagement in the Civil War.
Of the four women Abbott highlights, widow Rose O'Neal Greenhow is the best known. Greenhow lived in Washington where she lobbied politicians on behalf of the confederacy. She learned how to write messages in code and used her young daughter, Little Rose, to send information to Southern generals. For a time, mother and daughter were imprisoned together.
Elizabeth Van Lew, a wealthy Richmond abolitionist, was known to have Yankee roots, yet her wealth and Southern manners served as cover for a far-ranging espionage network. She even managed to place Mary Jane Bowser, a former slave, inside the Confederate White House.
This is an exciting read which focuses on women who risked everything for a cause in which they believed. It also offers a fuller picture of people involved in the Civil War.
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