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Forgotten Heroines J. Matthew Gallman. America's Joan of Arc: The Life of Anna Elizabeth Dickinson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. viii + 262 pp. $30.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-19-516145-8. Thomas P. Lowry. Confederate Heroines: 120 Southern Women Convicted by Union Military Justice. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006. xvii + 212 pp. $29.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8071-2990-6. Reviewed by Lisa Smith Published on H-CivWar (July, 2009) Commissioned by Charles D. Grear (Prairie View A & M University) Much has changed in the feld of Civil War Thomas P. Lowry, make welcome contributions to history in the past twenty years. While the tradi‐ that effort. tional emphasis on battles and leaders remains In America’s Joan of Arc J. Matthew Gallman popular, historians and researchers have turned has written a highly readable biography of orator, their attention to people left out of that narrative author, and actress Anna Dickinson and the role in an effort to construct a more complete picture of the "public woman" during the nineteenth cen‐ of the conflict and the nation. Through this focus tury. Considered one of the most famous women on those excluded, what has been discovered is of her time, Dickinson began her speaking career that those who were traditionally believed to have at the age of seventeen on the eve of the Civil War, played little or no significant role in the Civil War when she challenged a speaker lecturing on the actually participated in a variety of ways that role of women. That encounter led to a series of proved to have vital importance to the war effort. invitations to speak on topics such as women’s Two new studies, by J. Matthew Gallman and rights and antislavery. Dickinson soon became known during the Civil War as one of the leading H-Net Reviews stump speakers for the Republican Party, a voice publican Party for unpaid fees), and confinement for the antislavery movement, and as a woman in the Pennsylvania State Hospital for the Insane. who offered a radical’s critique on the war. She at‐ America’s Joan of Arc is more than merely a tracted crowds wherever she spoke, as hundreds biography of Anna Dickinson; it is also an exami‐ were drawn to the uniqueness of a young woman nation of the role of the “public woman” in the who delivered fery critiques of the Lincoln ad‐ nineteenth century. Using Dickinson as an exam‐ ministration’s failure to call for emancipation and ple, Gallman probes the ways in which prescribed of the conduct of the war. She earned the wartime gender roles affected women's opportunities, not‐ reputation as “America’s Joan of Arc,” and spent ing that they both helped create Dickinson’s the rest of her thirty-year career attempting to celebrity and limited the outlets for her talents. capitalize upon this wartime image as she moved Using Dickinson’s letters and scrapbooks, contem‐ into the lyceum movement, became involved in porary newspaper articles, as well as the writings the debate over women’s suffrage, published sev‐ of her family and numerous friends and corre‐ eral books, and became a stage actress. spondents, Gallman reconstructs the life of this Gallman divides his work into three parts, complicated individual and her importance in “Anna Dickinson’s Civil War,” “An Enduring Public paving the way for other public women. Figure,” and “Decline and Fall.” While the Civil In Confederate Heroines, author Thomas War era occupies a relatively small portion of the Lowry details the wartime experiences of 120 work, Gallman does an excellent job showing how Southern women convicted by Union military the memory and the narrative of the war shaped courts for war-related offenses. Nearly all of these Dickinson's postwar life and career. Part 1 details women have remained anonymous in the years Dickinson’s rise from a middle-class Quaker fami‐ since the Civil War. The most famous, Confederate ly to become one of the most formidable orators spies Belle Boyd and Rose O’Neal Greenhow, are for the Republican Party and a national celebrity not included in this account since, as Lowry states whose endorsement was sought on many of the is‐ “their deeds are familiar to every student of the sues of the day. Part 2 shows how Dickinson used Civil War” (p. xvi). The women who remain repre‐ the celebrity status she achieved during the war sent a cross-section of Confederate society, from to maintain her livelihood. She also tried her plantation mistresses to homeless widows, who, hand at writing, publishing a novel entitled What whether or not by their own free will, became Answer? (1868) that was a commentary on race caught up in the chaos of war. relations in the North. Lowry’s narrative recounts the stories of The fnal section of the book describes Dickin‐ Southern women who did not support the war ef‐ son's descent from national celebrity to forgotten fort in the “traditional” female ways, such as nurs‐ recluse. Unfortunately for Dickinson, the Civil ing and sewing, but through activities the Union War marked the height of her public career. Her Army deemed as a challenge to the Union war ef‐ postwar life was marked by her struggle to sup‐ fort. These women were charged with being spies, port herself--as well as her mother and sister--as aiding deserters, cutting telegraph wires, and the public’s desire to move on from the war led to smuggling letters as well as military and luxury a decline in speaking engagements. Her later goods into the blockaded South. After being con‐ years were also marred by poor health, alco‐ victed in Union military courts, many were im‐ holism, breaks in relationships with close friends prisoned in Fitchburg Female Prison in Massachu‐ and family (including her lawsuit against the Re‐ setts for time periods ranging from a few months to the duration of the war. 2 H-Net Reviews Lowry organizes his work by state, with each Both Gallman’s America’s Joan of Arc and Confederate and border state having its own sec‐ Lowry’s Confederate Heroines attempt to place tion. Within each state’s narrative is an account of women, whose roles in the war effort have often every known case of a female resident being con‐ been marginalized, back into the larger historical victed of a war-related offense by the Union mili‐ narrative of the war. It is clear that both have tary. It is clear that Lowry has done a prodigious done extensive research on their respective topics amount of research. Over 75,000 trial transcripts and have illuminated interesting and little-known of Union court marshals located in the National contributions of women during the Civil War. Archives were examined and any mention of fe‐ America’s Joan of Arc can be recommended to male defendants and their stories is recounted, of‐ university students, not only in specialized Civil ten in their own words. Lowry’s work follows Eliz‐ War classes but also those interested in the public abeth Leonard’s All the Daring of the Soldier role of women and the way in which the memory (1999) and They Fought Like Demons: Women Sol‐ of the Civil War influenced American society in diers in the American Civil War (2002) by DeAnne the late nineteenth century. It can also be recom‐ Blanton and Lauren M. Cook in attempting to in‐ mended to the interested general reader as it is clude women in the military aspect of the war as written in an engaging, easy-to-read style free of historical agents rather than passive victims. academic jargon. Confederate Heroines is most In spite of the volume of research there are a useful as a starting point for those interested in few faws in Lowry’s narrative. Lowry does not doing further research on the role of Southern ask, let alone attempt to resolve, any larger ques‐ women who actively opposed the Union military. tions. Instead, he simply recounts the stories of Lowry has laid the groundwork in identifying 120 these women without any attempt to examine the such women from Union military records, yet larger issues of historical context or what motivat‐ more research needs to be done in order to fesh ed them to undertake such activities. Lowry views out the historical context and motivations of these these women as examples of female empower‐ women. ment and does not consider other explanations Note for their activity. For example, when sources re‐ [1]. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary (New veal relatively few cases of women being brought York: G. & C. Merriam Co., 1974), 333. before Union courts in middle Tennessee, Lowry concludes that the lack of documentation suggests a “high degree of success in their undercover ac‐ tivities,” without considering other possible rea‐ sons for the absence of women from the court records (p. 82). The other minor faw is the use of the word “heroine,” which Merriam-Webster's de‐ fines as a “woman of heroic achievements or storian qualities.”[1] While some of the women presented earned that distinction through their activities, and author many--such as those who sold liquor to soldiers or turn their attention to several of these over‐ prostitutes who spread veneral disease--simply looked participants in an effort to include the con‐ took advantage of limited economic opportunities tributions of those who have been largely forgot‐ and may have sold their wares to paying Confed‐ ten by scholars and students in the narrative of erate soldiers as well. the war.
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