Civil War History

The truth is, all women who were doctors and nurses during the Civil War were pioneers in their field. Prior to 1861, nurses--and all but two doctors in the United States--were men. But when social reformer Dorothea Dix pointed out to President Lincoln that he had a scant 28 surgeons in the army's medical department to care for the 75,000 volunteers he'd just called for, he reluctantly conceded that women be allowed to serve as nurses. I want to introduce you to five remarkable women who blazed the trail for women in medicine. 1) Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell. An English immigrant, Dr. Blackwell (shown at left) was the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States, and ran an infirmary for women and children near the slums of New York City. When the Civil War broke out, she realized the Union army needed a system for distributing supplies and organized four thousand women into the Women’s Central Association of Relief (WCAR). The WCAR grew into chapters around the county, and this body systematically collected and distributed life-saving supplies such as bandages, blankets, food, clothing and medical supplies. Blackwell also partnered with several prominent male physicians in New York City to offer a one-month training course for 100 women who wanted to be nurses for the army. This was the first formal training for women nurses in the country. Once they completed their training, they were placed at various hospitals. By July 1861, the WCAR prompted the government to form a national version—the United States Sanitary Commission. And it all started because Dr. Blackwell decided to mobilize the women of the country to help the Union.   Georgeanna Woolsey 2) Georgeanna Woolsey. At 28 years old, Georgeanna should not have been allowed to serve the army as a nurse, but she got through the application process anyway. Against her mother’s and sisters’ wishes, she was one of the 100 women trained in New York City to be a nurse. Not content to sit in a parlor and knit or scrape lint, she was eager to go where the fighting was, to get her hands dirty in a way she had never been allowed to before as a wealthy, privileged woman. Georgeanna wrote many letters and accounts of her experiences, including this: “Some of the bravest women I have ever known were among this first company of army nurses. . . . Some of them were women of the truest refinement and culture; and day after day they quietly and patiently worked, doing, by order of the surgeon, things which not one of those gentlemen would have dared to ask of a woman whose male relative stood able and ready to defend her and report him. I have seen small white hands scrubbing floors, washing windows, and performing all menial offices. I have known women, delicately cared for at home, half fed in hospitals, hard worked day and night, and given, when sleep must be had, a wretched closet just large enough for a camp bed to stand in. I have known surgeons who purposely and ingeniously arranged these inconveniences with the avowed intention of driving away all women from their hospitals. “These annoyances could not have been endured by the nurses but for the knowledge that they were pioneers, who were, if possible, to gain standing ground for others. . ." Georgeanna Woolsey is the inspiration for my main character in Wedded to War. Woolsey nursed patients in seminary buildings, the U.S. Patent Office, and aboard hospital transport ships which carried wounded and sick soldiers from the swamps of the Virginia Peninsula. After the war, Georgeanna and her husband, veteran Union surgeon Dr. Francis Dr. Mary Edwards Walker Bacon, founded the Connecticut Training School for Nurses at New Haven Hospital.  She also published Hand Book of Nursing for Family and General Use and co-founded the Connecticut Children's Aid Society. 3) Dr. Mary Edwards Walker After volunteering as a nurse in 1861, and then as an assistant surgeon, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker earned a Union army commission for her services as surgeon in 1863. In 1864, she was captured by Confederates, suspected of espionage, and thrown into Richmond's Castle Thunder prison where she remained four months before her release. In 1865, she became the only woman ever to receive the Medal of Honor. Dr. Walker appears in Spy of Richmond. The newspaper article Mr. Kent dictates to Sophie about Dr. Walker's imprisonment is verbatim from the original story that ran in the Richmond Enquirer--including the comment about her "homely" appearance. 4) Captain Sally Tompkins Sally Louisa Tompkins founded a private hospital in Richmond, Virginia, to care for the flood of Confederate wounded. During the war, her hospital cared for 1,333 soldiers and suffered only 73 deaths, which was the lowest mortality rate of any military hospital. The Robertson hospital, named for the judge who let Sally use one of his houses, returned 94 percent of its patients to service. Eventually Confederate authorities decided to close all private hospitals, declaring that soldier patients could only be cared for at government hospitals run by a commissioned officer with at least a rank of captain. When Tompkins heard the news, she Captain Sally Tompkins called on Jefferson Davis and asked for an exception to the new rule. Since her hospital's remarkable record spoke for itself, Davis commissioned Tompkins a Captain of Cavalry, unassigned, making Robertson Hospital an official government facility. She was the only female commissioned officer in the Confederate Army. As an unassigned officer she could remain at the hospital permanently. The military rank also allowed her to draw government rations for her patients, but she refused to be added to the army payroll. 5) Clara Barton No list of groundbreaking nurses would be complete without her. Barton was fiercely independent, a self-appointed field-nurse for the Army of the Potomac. Working on her own, beyond the structure of the Sanitary Commission and Army Medical Department, she stockpiled supplies in her small Washington flat and then drove into the Virginia countryside, and into Maryland, to disperse them among the wounded.  At General Butler's request, she cared for the soldiers in the Army of the James during the summer Clara Barton campaigns of 1864, as well. Her work for soldiers and their families didn't end along with the war, however. She continued her service by opening the Missing Soldiers’ Office in Washington, D.C. to help family members find the remains of their loved ones. By 1869, she had identified 22,000 missing men and received and responded to 63,182 letters from those trying to locate their soldiers. Later, Clara brought a chapter of the International Red Cross to life in America. For more in Clara Barton, click here.   ~~~~~~~~ A Woman's Place The following is excerpted from my nonfiction book, Stories of Faith and Courage from the Home Front, to explain why women had such struggles as nurses at the beginning of the war. The clash between surgeons and women nurses which Georgeanna Woolsey described had its roots in how each group of people viewed the woman’s place in society. Americans in the mid-nineteen century commonly believed that men and women had their own separate spheres of activity. Men occupied the commercial, business and political fields. Women’s activities were relegated to home, church, women’s clubs and reform groups, and circles of female friends and relatives. But in which sphere did the hospital fall? Normally, when someone fell ill, a doctor visited the home, examined the patient, and left the nursing care to the female relatives living in the household. Wives, sisters, daughters, and grandmothers administered medicine, dressed wounds, and saw to the patient’s recovery. The only people treated in the hospital were those who didn’t have women at home to nurse them. Once the war began, medical care for soldiers had to be systemized since the troops could not recover at home (although many wives and mothers travelled hundreds of miles to personally nurse their own wounded family members). Male doctors held that the ward was part of the military hospital, so it fell under their dominion. Popular opinion also held that women would faint in the presence of war’s gruesome casualties, and that their innocence would be marred with exposure to the naked male body. Women nurses were convinced the hospital ward belonged in the female domain, since they were treating sick soldiers the same way they would in their own homes—and the home was unequivocally within the female sphere. More tension arose between men and women when the female nurses viewed the doctors’ advice as suggestions rather than strict orders, for at home, they had the freedom to follow or not follow the doctor’s orders as they saw fit. Over the course of the war, the surgeons and nurses came to accept and work with each other as both groups proved their mettle and shared genuine desire to save lives and speed recovery of the soldiers. ~~~~~ Wedded to War (Heroines Behind the Lines Civil War Book One) Charlotte Waverly leaves a life of privilege, wealth–and confining expectations–to be one of the first female nurses for the Union Army. She quickly discovers that she’s fighting more than just the Rebellion by working in the hospitals. Corruption, harassment, and opposition from Northern doctors threaten to push her out of her new role. At the same time, her sweetheart disapproves of her shocking strength and independence, forcing her to make an impossible decision: Will she choose love and marriage, or duty to a cause that seems to be losing?   Find out more here.

Hundreds of women were spies on both sides of the Civil War. The book Stealing Secrets by H. Donald Winkler shares the stories of seventeen of them. Below, I'll tell you a little about five women spies every Civil War enthusiast should know. 1. Belle Boyd, spy for the Confederacy [[{"type":"media", "view_mode":"media_large", "fid":"1145", "attributes":{"class":"media-image wp-image-2791 size-medium", "typeof":"foaf:Image", "style":"", "width":"241", "height":"300", "alt":"BelleBoyd"}}]] Belle Boyd   As a 17-year-old living with her prominent slaveholding family in West Virginia,  Belle Boyd was arrested for shooting a Union soldier who had broken into her family’s home and insulted her mother. After she was cleared of all charges, she charmed intelligence from Union officers, and passed it to the Confederacy. Highly suspicious of her, Union officials sent her to live with family in Front Royal, Virginia, where she became a courier between Confederate generals Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson and P.G.T. Beauregard. Jackson credited the information she delivered with helping him win victories in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862. Boyd was arrested three more times throughout the war, and ended up marrying the Union naval officer who once served as her captor. 2. Pauline Cushman, spy for the Union [[{"type":"media", "view_mode":"media_large", "fid":"1146", "attributes":{"class":"media-image wp-image-2792 size-medium", "typeof":"foaf:Image", "style":"", "width":"197", "height":"300", "alt":"Paulline Cushman"}}]] Paulline Cushman   Pauline Cushman, born in New Orleans, was a struggling 30-year-old actress in 1863. In Louisville, Kentucky, she was dared by Confederate officers to interrupt a show with a toast to the Confederacy and its president, Jefferson Davis. Seizing the opportunity, Cushman told the Union Army’s local provost marshal that the toast could be used to win trust from the Confederates in attendance. It proved to be the key that unlocked the door her most important role as a federal spy. In Nashville she worked with the Army of the Cumberland, gathering intelligence about Rebel operations, identifying Confederate spies, and acting as a federal courier. Confederates arrested her and sentenced her to hang, but the unexpected arrival of Union forces at Shelbyville saved her life. 3. Rose O'Neal Greenhow, spy for the Confederacy [[{"type":"media", "view_mode":"media_large", "fid":"1147", "attributes":{"class":"media-image wp-image-2793 size-medium", "typeof":"foaf:Image", "style":"", "width":"286", "height":"300", "alt":"Rose Greenhow"}}]] Rose Greenhow   The widow Rose O'Neal Greenhow was a Washington socialite and zealous secessionist. She began spying for the Confederacy in 1861. One of her most important messages allegedly helped Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard gather enough forces to win the First Battle of Bull Run. Though she was placed under house arrest after that, Greenhow still managed to get information to her contacts. In January 1862, she was transferred, along with her 8-year-old daughter, to Old Capitol Prison. Several months later she was deported to Baltimore, Maryland, where the Confederates welcomed her as a hero. Confederate President Jefferson Davis sent Greenhow to Britain and France to help gain support for the Confederacy. Her journey home would be the end of her story. To quote Smithsonian.com: In September 1864, Greenhow returned to the South aboard the Condor, a British blockade-runner, carrying $2,000 in gold. A Union gunboat pursued the ship as it neared the North Carolina shore, and it ran aground on a sandbar. Against the captain’s advice, Greenhow tried to escape in a rowboat with two other passengers. The boat capsized and she drowned, presumably weighed down by the gold she carried around her neck. Her body washed ashore the next day and was buried by the Confederates with full military honors. 4. Harriet Tubman, spy for the Union [[{"type":"media", "view_mode":"media_large", "fid":"1148", "attributes":{"class":"media-image wp-image-2794 size-medium", "typeof":"foaf:Image", "style":"", "width":"199", "height":"300", "alt":"Harriet Tubman"}}]] Harriet Tubman   Though most known for her role spiriting slaves North to freedom, Union officers recruited her to run a spy network composed of former slaves in South Carolina. She also became the first woman in the U.S. history to lead a military expedition. She not only helped Col. James Montgomery plan a night raid to free slaves from rice plantations along the Combahee River. On June 1, 1863, Tubman was in the lead with Montgomery as they. along with hundreds of black soldiers, snaked up the river in gunboats, avoiding mines that lurked along the waterway. When they reached the shore, they destroyed a Confederate supply depot and freed more than 750 slaves.   5. Elizabeth Van Lew, spy for the Union [[{"type":"media", "view_mode":"media_large", "fid":"1149", "attributes":{"class":"media-image wp-image-2795 size-medium", "typeof":"foaf:Image", "style":"", "width":"178", "height":"300", "alt":"Elizabeth Van Lew"}}]] Elizabeth Van Lew   Van Lew was a Richmond-born abolitionist whose sympathy for the Union, and the cause of freedom, compelled her to bring food and other comforts to the Union officers imprisoned a few blocks from her house at Libby Prison. Her loyalties were under suspicion, but her wealth and social status protected her for the most part. In December 1863, a Union officer she helped escape from Libby told General Benjamin Butler about her, suggesting she would make an excellent spy contact for the North. Butler contacted Van Lew with his request, and she agreed. She developed her own spy network, and digested and synthesized the information before sending it, encoded, via a courier to Union military officials. Van Lew's spy ring included black and white Richmonders, slave and free, native Virginians and immigrants. One of these was Mary Elizabeth Bowser, a former slave who was planted as a domestic in the White House of the Confederacy. (We talked about Mary in the post Black Spies of Confederate Richmond.) For more on Elizabeth Van Lew, I recommend Southern Lady, Yankee Spy by Elizabeth R. Varon, or this more concise Smithsonian article: "Elizabeth Van Lew: An Unlikely Union Spy". Hundreds of women, just as daring in their deeds of espionage as these spies above, have escaped fame for their work. In Spy of Richmond, I've chosen to explore the life of a young woman drawn into the spy network of Elizabeth Van Lew. The fictional heroine of Sophie Kent represents the real historical heroines who quietly gathered intelligence for the spymistress at great personal risk. Spy of Richmond (Heroines Behind the Lines Civil War Book 4) [[{"type":"media", "view_mode":"media_large", "fid":"1150", "attributes":{"class":"media-image alignleft size-full wp-image-2014", "typeof":"foaf:Image", "style":"", "width":"125", "height":"193", "alt":"125Spycover"}}]] Compelled to atone for the sins of her slaveholding father, Union loyalist Sophie Kent risks everything to help end the war from within the Confederate capital and abolish slavery forever. But she can’t do it alone. Former slave Bella Jamison sacrifices her freedom to come to Richmond, where her Union soldier husband is imprisoned, and her twin sister still lives in bondage in Sophie’s home. Though it may cost them their lives, they work with Sophie to betray Rebel authorities. Harrison Caldwell, a Northern journalist who escorts Bella to Richmond, infiltrates the War Department as a clerk–but is conscripted to defend the city’s fortifications. As Sophie’s spy network grows, she walks a tightrope of deception, using her father’s position as newspaper editor and a suitor’s position in the ordnance bureau for the advantage of the Union. One misstep could land her in prison, or worse. Suspicion hounds her until she barely even trusts herself. When her espionage endangers the people she loves, she makes a life-and-death gamble. Will she follow her convictions even though it costs her everything–and everyone–she holds dear?      [[{"type":"media", "view_mode":"media_large", "fid":"1151", "attributes":{"class":"media-image alignnone wp-image-2768 size-full", "typeof":"foaf:Image", "style":"", "width":"134", "height":"45", "alt":"add-to-goodreads-button"}}]]  

On February 9, 1864, 109 Union prisoners escaped from the notorious Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia. The story of this prison break, including the months of secret, dangerous preparations, is so intense and exciting I'm surprised Hollywood hasn't turned it into a movie yet. As for me, as soon as I discovered this historical drama, I knew it would have a prominent place in my novel, Spy of Richmond. And it does. I don't want to spoil the book for you, but I can at least tell you that the situation at Libby, aka the Bastille of the South, had grown desperate by the time of the breakout. The prisoners were "starving by inches," as Lt. Cyrus P. Heffley wrote. The prisoner exchange program had been suspended, and plans were already underway to move the prisoners to Andersonville---where any hope of escape to the North would have dissolved completely. If any were to escape, they should do it now. But hope and despair battled fiercely as multiple escape attempts failed. Libby held about 1200 Union officers at the time of the escape. Joseph Wheelan, author of Libby Prison Breakout, also learned that a number of Union colored soldiers were kept in the cellar. This is puzzling, of course, since Jefferson Davis had said black soldiers were to be treated as runaway slaves--either shot, or sold further South into slavery. The white and black prisoners had extremely different experiences in the same prison. In Spy of Richmond, you'll get to see, and maybe feel, what those differences are through the eyes of my characters. The breakout was engineered by two masterminds I have come to know and love: Colonel Thomas E. Rose, a schoolteacher from Pennsylvania, and Major A.G. Hamilton, a homebuilder from Kentucky. Once free of the prison property, the escapees would have had little chance of survival had it not been for the help of the Union loyalists (black, white, slave, free, men and women) in Richmond, including Elizabeth Van Lew, head of the underground spy network that fed intelligence to Union General Benjamin Butler. Rose, Hamilton, Van Lew, and Butler all appear in Spy of Richmond as they interact with my fictional characters. For everything you want to know about the breakout and its context, I highly recommend Wheelan's Libby Prison Breakout: The Daring Escape from the Notorious Civil War Prison. Mr. Wheelan was kind enough to answer my emails when I was in the throes of my own research, and I'm honored that he even read and endorsed Spy of Richmond.  

Victorian women turned to Godey's Lady's Book for fashion plates and advice for women on cooking, literature and morality. (See a page from the magazine at this blog post.) But the elderly editor of the women's magazine, Sarah Josepha Hale, had more than hoop skirts and parasols on her mind. [[{"type":"media", "view_mode":"media_large", "fid":"920", "attributes":{"class":"media-image wp-image-2586 size-full", "typeof":"foaf:Image", "style":"", "width":"550", "height":"367", "alt":"godeysfashions"}}]] From Godey's Lady's Book     At the age of 74, Hale wrote a letter to Lincoln on September 28, 1863, urging him to have the "day of our annual Thanksgiving made a National and fixed Union Festival." (Click on the image at left for a larger view.) She explained, "You may have observed that, for some years past, there has been an increasing interest felt in our land to have the Thanksgiving held on the same day, in all the States; it now needs National recognition and authoritive fixation, only, to become permanently, an American custom and institution." Hale had been advocating a national thanksgiving date for 15 years as the editor of Godey's Lady's Book. (The portrait of Hale, below, was done when she was 43 years old.) Yes, the Pilgrims and Native Americans celebrated their harvest with a day of thanksgiving in 1621. George Washington proclaimed Nov. 26, 1789, as a national day of thanksgiving, as well. Since then, each state scheduled its own Thanksgiving holiday at different times, mainly in New England and other Northern states. But President Lincoln agreed with Hale's recommendation and responded to her request almost immediately, unlike several of his predecessors, who ignored her petitions altogether. On October 3, 1863, Lincoln issued his Thanksgiving Proclamation, for the first time setting aside the last Thursday in November as a National Day for giving thanks, setting the precedent for the annual holiday we will celebrate tomorrow. The text of this Proclamation is below. The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they can not fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well as the iron and coal as of our precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.   No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the imposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purpose, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and union. In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the city of Washington, this 3d day of October, A.D. 1863, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-eighth. Source: Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler. Rutgers University Press, 1953. May you all have a truly happy Thanksgiving this year!

Confession: I get more excited about the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address every year than I do for my own birthday. Happy Dedication Day everyone! On this day in 1863, an estimated 15,000 attended the Dedication Ceremony of the National Soldiers Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, a little more than four months after the battle of Gettysburg took place. The National Cemetery wasn't quite ready by this date yet, however, so the actual ceremony took place about fifty yards away at Evergreen Cemetery. For more about what this momentous day was like, here's a brief video from historian Tim Smith and Civil War Trust. The keynote speaker for Dedication Day was the politician and orator Edward Everett, who spoke for two hours, while Abraham Lincoln's speech was closer to two minutes. Read the text of Edward Everett's speech here. Read Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address here. [[{"type":"media", "view_mode":"media_large", "fid":"918", "attributes":{"class":"media-image size-full wp-image-2572", "typeof":"foaf:Image", "style":"", "width":"550", "height":"547", "alt":"Painting: Gettysburg Address by Mort Kunstler"}}]] Painting: Gettysburg Address by Mort Kunstler   A few observations from Gettysburg residents follow. "[The president was] the most peculiar looking figure on horseback I had ever seen. He rode a medium-sized black horse and wore a black high silk hat. It seemed to be that his feet almost touched the ground, but he was perfectly at ease." ~Daniel Skelly   "The chief impression made on me...was the inexpressible sadness on his face, which was in so marked contrast with what was going on...where all was excitement and where everyone was having such a jolly time [referring to a parade before the speeches]." ~Liberty Hollinger [[{"type":"media", "view_mode":"media_large", "fid":"919", "attributes":{"class":"media-image alignleft size-full wp-image-2568", "typeof":"foaf:Image", "style":"", "width":"300", "height":"239", "alt":"lincoln address"}}]]In the text of his address, Lincoln said, "The world will little note nor long remember what we say here," but has been proven wrong for 151 years. After Lincoln's remarks, his Attorney General, Wayne McVeagh, told him, "You have made an immortal address!" Lincoln was quick to respond: "Oh, you must not say that. You must not be extravagant about it." McVeagh, however, had it right. Lincoln's words continue to inspire. Personally, I wish I could have been at Gettysburg last year for the 150th anniversary. (But since I was able to be present for the 150th anniversary of the battle in July 2013, I have no room to complain!) Fortunately for me, and for everyone else who would have liked to have been there for last year's Dedication Day, we can watch the ceremony in its entirety below, thanks to the Gettysburg Foundation. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James McPherson were the keynote speakers at Soldiers' National Cemetery, Gettysburg National Military Park. The program included a naturalization ceremony for 16 new citizens administered by officials from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; remarks by Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett; a reading of the Gettysburg Address by Lincoln portrayer James Getty; musical performances by the U.S. Marine Band and others; and a Civil War color guard presented by the 11th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry Fife and Drum. Enjoy! The final scene of my novel Widow of Gettysburg takes place at the Dedication Ceremony, Nov. 19, 1863. Can you think of any other movies or books in which the characters are inspired by or quote Lincoln's Gettysburg Address? Why do you suppose this two-minute speech is still so powerful today? Source for quotes in this blog post: Bennett, Gerald R. Days of Uncertainty and Dread: The Ordeal Endured by the Citizens at Gettysburg. Gettysburg, PA: The Gettysburg Foundation, 1994. About Widow of Gettysburg When a horrific battle rips through Gettysburg, the farm of Union widow Liberty Holloway is disfigured into a Confederate field hospital, bringing her face to face with unspeakable suffering--and a Rebel scout who awakens her long dormant heart. While Liberty's future crumbles as her home is destroyed, the past comes rushing back to Bella, a former slave and Liberty's hired help, when she finds herself surrounded by Southern soldiers, one of whom knows the secret that would place Liberty in danger if revealed.In the wake of shattered homes and bodies, Liberty and Bella struggle to pick up the pieces the battle has left behind. Will Liberty be defined by the tragedy in her life, or will she find a way to triumph over it?   Widow of Gettysburg is inspired by first-person accounts from women who lived in Gettysburg during the battle and its aftermath. Read more about the inspiration of the novel here. This is the second novel in Jocelyn Green's Heroines Behind the Lines series. Check out the brief book trailer below: