African American Civil War Nurse and Teacher Susie Baker began life as a slave on August 6, 1848, at the Grest Plantation in Liberty County, Georgia, 35 miles south of Savannah. She was the first of nine children of Hagar Ann Reed and Raymond Baker. Her mother was a domestic servant for the Grest family. The Grests treated Susie and her brother with great affection, their childless mistress even allowing them to sleep on her bed when her husband was away on business. This easy-going atmosphere, Susie’s first experience of mutual trust between black people and white, became part of the standard by which she judged all later relationships with white people. About 1854 Mr. Grest allowed Susie and her…
Category: Civil War Women
Civil War Women
Amy Harper
After the fall of Atlanta in September 1864, 60,000 Union soldiers under the command of General William Tecumseh Sherman marched more than 1,000 miles through the South. By March 1865, his army was in the middle of North Carolina, heading north with the intention of joining forces with General Ulysses S. Grant, who was then besieging the Confederate capital of Richmond. As part of his attempt to defend Richmond and nearby Petersburg, General Robert E. Lee assigned General Joseph E. Johnston to stop Sherman’s forces from entering Virginia. In central North Carolina Johnston managed to piece together a ragtag army of 20,000 men. He maneuvered to take advantage of Sherman’s decision to divide his army into two columns. On the…
Abolitionism
Abolitionism was a political movement that sought to end the practice of slavery and the slave trade. ‘The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage’ was the first American abolition society. It was established in Philadelphia in 1775, primarily by Quakers, who believed that one man owning another was a sin. Its operation was suspended during the British occupation of Philadelphia and the Revolutionary War. It began again in 1784, with Benjamin Franklin as first president. At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, an agreement was reached that allowed the Federal government to abolish the international slave trade by 1808. The principal organized bodies of this reform were the Society of Friends, the Pennsylvania Antislavery Society, and…
Emily Lyles Harris
Emily Lyles was born in 1827 and grew up in the village of Spartanburg, South Carolina, until 1840, when the family moved to the country. Amos Lyles was determined to educate his only daughter, and he enrolled Emily in Phoebe Paine’s school in the village. Emily boarded there as well. Miss Paine was a Yankee, and believed that women should be educated to their full potential, and she taught Emily to write with feeling and understanding about the world around her. Miss Paine also admonished Emily to never forget her innate talents. Emily married David Lyles in 1846. David farmed 100 acres of his 500-acre property, which was located 8 miles from Spartanburg, South Carolina. Thereafter, Emily’s life was tough….
Elizabeth Thorn
Caretaker of Gettysburg’s Evergreen Cemetery At the time of the Battle of Gettysburg, Elizabeth Thorn was caretaker of Evergreen Cemetery, a job normally performed by her husband Peter but he was away serving in the Union Army. Her elderly parents and her three small sons were living with her in the cemetery gatehouse, and she was six months pregnant. The cemetery grounds were littered with dead soldiers and horses, and it was her responsibility to bury them. Image: Elizabeth Thorn Monument This 7-foot bronze statue created by sculptor Ron Tunison of Cairo, New York, depicts a weary Elizabeth Thorn, leaning on a shovel as she rests from her work. The memorial was dedicated in November 2002 and honors the contributions…
Ella Palmer
Civil War Nurse from Tennessee During the Civil War years, widow Ella Palmer basically gave up her own life to travel wherever sick and wounded Confederate soldiers needed her tender care, with her small daughter in tow. Her selflessness was a testament to her devotion to the Confederacy and the Southern cause. Ella Palmer was born in Tennessee in 1829. When the Civil War began, she was widowed with a five-year-old daughter. When the Confederate Government asked for help from its citizens, she and her daughter responded to Chattanooga, where they found sick and wounded soldiers lying on the floor in a makeshift hospital, with no blankets to keep them warm. Palmer gathered all her own worldly goods and returned…
Mary Edwards Walker
First Woman Surgeon in the Union Army After the Battle of Fredricksburg in December 1862, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker worked as a Civil War field surgeon near the Union front lines, treating soldiers in a tent hospital. She tried to increase the survival rate by advising stretcher bearers not to carry wounded soldiers downhill with the head below the feet. Although she probably did not perform any amputations, she thought that many of them were unnecessary and encouraged some soldiers to refuse them. Mary Edwards Walker, second female doctor in the United States, was born in Oswego, New York, on November 26, 1832, into an abolitionist family. Mary was the youngest of five girls, followed by one boy. Her father,…
Clarina Nichols
Women’s Rights Activist and Journalist Clarina Nichols (1810–1885) was a journalist and newspaper editor who was involved in all three of the major reform movements of the mid-19th century: temperance, abolition and women’s rights. Because of her own experiences, Nichols was one of the first to grasp the importance of economic rights for women, of the need for wives to keep their property and wages away from their husbands’ control. Clarina Irene Howard was born January 25, 1810, in West Townshend, Vermont, into a prosperous New England family. She was the oldest of eight children, and received an above average education for her day. Her father was the town’s ‘overseer of the poor.’ Clarina listened to his interviews with poor…
Charlotte Forten
Women in Education: Teacher of Emancipated Slaves Charlotte Forten was the first northern African American schoolteacher to go south to teach former slaves. As a black woman, she hoped to find kinship with the freedmen, but her own education set her apart from the former slaves. For two years she stayed on St. Helena Island, South Carolina, but ill health forced her to return north. In 1864, she published “Life on the Sea Islands” in The Atlantic Monthly, which brought the work of the Port Royal Experiment to the attention of northern readers. Childhood Charlotte Forten was born in Philadelphia in 1837 into an influential and affluent family, all of whom were active in promoting equal rights for African Americans….
Major Belle Reynolds
Civil War Nurse from Illinois Belle Reynolds followed her husband to war, and ended up serving on the hospital ships at Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee during the Battle of Shiloh, where she was under fire several times. Reynolds recorded her experiences during the war in a diary. Belle (Arabella) Macomber was born on October 20, 1840 in Shelbourne Falls, Massachusetts. Her father was a well-known lawyer. As a child she heard stories of fugitive slaves from her family and friends. In April 1860, Belle married William Reynolds, a druggist in Peoria, Illinois. On their first anniversary, they were in church when a messenger brought news of the attack on Fort Sumter. As soon as the news broke, William immediately enlisted in…