301 WOMEN, CONTRIBUTIONS OF own mistakes. In fact, at least one spy was Wirz, Henry (Heinrich operating out of Winder’s own office. Hermann) (1823–1865) Moreover, Winder could be bribed to pro- Confederate captain Henry Wirz was the vide a Confederate travel pass—a require- only soldier, Confederate or Union, to be ment for anyone wanting to travel through- tried and executed for war crimes once the out Confederate lands—in exchange for Civil War was over. Born in Switzerland, money, gifts, or favors. Several Union he claimed to be a physician when he im- spies later reported that they got their migrated to America sometime before the passes by paying Winder $100 or more. Civil War but appears to have had no Prior to the war, Winder was an in- medical training. For most of the war he structor at the U.S. Military Academy, served as a sergeant in the Fourth having graduated there himself in 1820, Louisiana Infantry, but on March 27, but even after many years in the U.S. 1864, he was sent to Andersonville, a Army he had failed to rise above the rank prison camp in Georgia, to manage its of major. Therefore, he did not hesitate to day-to-day activities. Wirz was later join the newly formed Confederacy when blamed for the prison’s deplorable living Confederate president Jefferson Davis, conditions, although many of Anderson- one of his former students, asked him to ville’s problems had been created by his serve as the provost marshal of Richmond. superiors. Near the war’s end, Wirz was Winder did a poor job from the beginning, arrested at Andersonville and brought to particularly in regard to hiring the agents trial in Washington, D.C., where he was who worked under him. The agents were hanged on November 10, 1865. Tran- largely disreputable men who often openly scripts of his trial were then published by drank on duty. In fact, one of these men, the U.S. government as a means of keep- supposed spycatcher Philip Cashmeyer, ing alive anti-Southern sentiments after was actually a part of a network of Union the war. See also Andersonville; execu- spies headed by a local woman, Elizabeth tions; prisons and prisoners of war. Van Lew, whom Winder failed to recog- nize as a Union agent. Winder unwittingly women, contributions of made it easier for such people to get in- Women from both the North and the formation on Confederate troop move- South made many contributions to the ments by posting on a wall in his office war effort. Some donated handmade the names and sizes of all Confederate goods to the military, while others volun- regiments in his area. teered their time in charity efforts to sup- The Confederacy finally recognized port the war and its soldiers. Still others Winder’s incompetence and transferred took up jobs traditionally performed by him to another job, that of supervising the men, because during the war there were distribution of supplies to prisoners of not enough male workers outside of the war. At the same time, he was promoted to military. For example, most workers in the rank of brigadier general. But Winder ordnance laboratories and factories proved incompetent at this assignment as (places that developed and manufactured well, often failing to send supplies where ammunition) were women, as were many they were needed. Winder often com- telegraph operators. Women also served plained of being overworked and fatigued, as doctors or nurses on the battlefield or and when he died in 1865 his physician as spies behind enemy lines. cited these two conditions as the reason In the South, where clothing and other for his death. See also spies; Van Lew, supplies became scarce as the war pro- Elizabeth. gressed, many women sewed or knitted WOMEN, CONTRIBUTIONS OF 302 clothing and other items for soldiers. One One prominent Civil War nurse was Mary of the most industrious knitters during the Ann Bickerdyke, who served under Union war was reputed to be Mary Custis Lee, the general Ulysses S. Grant as the head of wife of Confederate general Robert E. Lee. nursing, hospital, and welfare services for By May 1864, with the help of her three his western armies during the Civil War. grown daughters, she had made over four She followed his soldiers from conflict to hundred pairs of socks for Confederate sol- conflict, establishing field hospitals as diers, many in her husband’s Army of needed. Near the end of the war, she did the Northern Virginia. same for General William Tecumseh Sher- Other women contributed their nursing man, accompanying his forces on their rather than sewing skills. By some esti- march from Atlanta, Georgia, to the sea. mates, more than three thousand women Between 1861 and 1865, Bickerdyke pro- served as nurses, either official or unoffi- vided nursing care on at least nineteen bat- cial, during the Civil War. In the South, tlefields. where the majority of battles took place, Perhaps the most prominent Civil War many women entered nursing out of ne- nurse was Clara Barton, the founder of the cessity when wounded soldiers showed up American Red Cross. She nursed wounded on their doorsteps. Their informal, tempo- soldiers who were sent to Washington, rary field hospitals were known as wayside D.C., to recuperate, organized an agency hospitals, and although these facilities did whose purpose was to ensure that medical not have the physicians and medical sup- supplies reached wounded soldiers on the plies of the formal, big-city Northern and battlefield, and was involved in fund- Southern hospitals, they still might treat raising activities in New England that hundreds of soldiers. A wayside hospital helped send nurses, including herself, to the near High Point, North Carolina, for ex- front lines. ample, served 5,795 Confederate soldiers Barton and Bickerdyke were profes- between September 1863 and May 1865. sional nurses, but others took up nursing A few women also served as hospital ad- simply because they were already on the ministrators. For example, after Confeder- front lines and wanted to help. These ate president Jefferson Davis called on cit- women were the officers’ wives who ac- izens in Richmond, Virginia, to create companied their husbands to military private hospitals to care for soldiers camps and provided various volunteer ser- wounded in the 1861 First Battle of Bull vices, including cooking, washing dishes Run, Sally L. Tompkins convinced a local and clothes, sewing, and tending to the judge, John Robertson, to convert his home wounded. Sometimes called “daughters of into the twenty-two-bed Robertson Hospi- the regiment,” they generally were kept far tal, which she would manage. She re- from the fighting, although some women mained in charge of this facility throughout did end up in the thick of combat. For ex- the war, even after Davis instituted a re- ample, Marie Tebe, whose husband was quirement that all Confederate hospitals be with the 27th and then the 114th Pennsyl- run by military officers. (In order to retain vania Infantry, was reportedly in heavy ac- Tompkins as the hospital’s administrator, tion at least thirteen times and tended to Davis made her a cavalry captain; she was the wounded at the Battle of Chancel- the only woman ever commissioned as a lorsville even during a barrage from enemy Confederate army officer.) artillery. Even though most Northern women A few Northern women were full- lived far from the war’s battlefields, they fledged physicians rather than nurses, al- too contributed nursing care to soldiers. though female doctors were a rarity in the 303 WOMEN, CONTRIBUTIONS OF nineteenth century. For example, Mary services without pay, thereby becoming the Edwards Walker, a graduate of Syracuse first female surgeon in the U.S. Army. She Medical College in New York, tried to en- is also the only female veteran ever to re- list in the Union army immediately after ceive a Congressional Medal of Honor for the Civil War began. When she was denied her services. After a short stint at a hospi- a commission, she volunteered her medical tal in Washington, D.C., Walker spent two WOMEN, CONTRIBUTIONS OF 304 years as a battlefield surgeon, administer- tures in return for her behavior, and if she ing to Union soldiers during such conflicts continued it she might be fined or impris- as the Battle of Fredericksburg and the oned. Battle of Chickamauga. Even before the war broke out, women Other female physicians served out of in both the North and the South expressed political activism. Specifically, in April their political views on issues related to 1861 Drs. Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell the conflict, especially slavery. To this held public meetings at their New York In- end, many women produced books and ar- firmary, a hospital staffed entirely by ticles that argued in favor of giving slaves women, where they encouraged ninety- their freedom. For example, Harriet one women to sign a letter demanding that Beecher Stowe’s antislavery novel Uncle the government create a soldiers’ relief or- Tom’s Cabin and former slave Sojourner ganization. This eventually led to the es- Truth’s memoir The Narrative of So- tablishment of the U.S. Sanitary Commis- journer Truth both increased opposition to sion on June 9, 1861, which was charged slavery just prior to the Civil War. with overseeing all army hospitals. Meanwhile, other women took a The South had its political activists as hands-on approach to helping slaves, well. Some, like the Blackwells, were opening their homes to those escaping dedicated to improving the treatment of from the South to the North both before wounded soldiers. Others were concerned and during the war. Former slave Harriet with improving conditions for all South- Tubman created a network of such “safe erners. Approximately one thousand houses” called the Underground Railroad women marched in front of the governor’s that helped hundreds of slaves escape to house in Richmond, Virginia, on April 2, freedom. Tubman also encouraged over 1862, to protest the high prices and mea- eight hundred slaves in South Carolina to ger supplies of food in the South. fight for or escape to freedom, and she Southern women also took a stand did some spying for the Union as well. against the occupation of their lands by Female spies served both the North Union soldiers. In particular, after the and the South during the Civil War. Union forces of Major General Benjamin Among the most prominent were Con- F. Butler occupied New Orleans, Louisiana, federate spies Belle Boyd and Rose in April 1862, the women of the city in- O’Neal Greenhow and Union spy Eliza- sulted or even spat on the soldiers they beth Van Lew. Pauline Cushman, an ac- saw in the street. One woman even tress in Nashville, Tennessee, also spied dumped a chamber pot filled with human for the North until she was captured, tried excrement on the head of Captain David for treason, and sentenced to hang in Farragut from her second-story window. 1863. She was rescued before her execu- Others sang Confederate songs in the tion by invading Union soldiers. street. The only way that Butler could stop In addition to participating in covert this abuse was by issuing General Order activities, women also fought the enemy 28 on May 15, 1862—also known as the openly. At least 750 women were in- Woman’s Order—decreeing that any volved in battlefield conflicts. A few woman caught repeatedly insulting a women found themselves in the thick of Union soldier by word, gesture, or other combat after becoming “daughters of the means would be thereafter treated as regiment.” For example, Kady Brownell though she were the town prostitute. In carried the U.S. flag into battle for her other words, the woman would be derided husband’s military unit, the Fifth Rhode with vulgar comments and obscene ges- Island Infantry. Bridget Devens became 305 WOMEN, CONTRIBUTIONS OF known as “Michigan Bridget” for serving tary camps and the Confederate capital, as flagbearer for the First Michigan Cav- and abolitionist Fanny Kemble, author of alry, in which her husband was a private. Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Most women who wanted to fight, Plantation (1863), shared her experi- however, disguised themselves as male ences as a Southern plantation owner’s soldiers or sailors, since neither the Union wife. Other women writers produced pa- nor the Confederacy allowed women to triotic articles and editorials for newspa- enlist in the military. By some estimates, pers and magazines during the war. Of there were approximately four hundred these, among the most prominent was disguised women, although only about Mary Abigail Dodge, who wrote under one hundred cases have been docu- the pen name Gail Hamilton. In her 1863 mented. One such case was an unidenti- Atlantic Monthly article “A Call to My fied woman who was discovered in male Country,” she exhorted Northern women clothing among the dead at Gettysburg in to support their soldiers’ efforts in order July 1863. Another female soldier whose to keep the men’s morale high. gender was discovered after her death After the war, women continued to write was Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, who en- articles and books about their war-related listed in the U.S. Army disguised as a experiences and views. For example, in man and served with the 153rd New York 1868 Mary Todd Lincoln’s former seam- Regiment. The woman with the most doc- stress, Elizabeth Keckley, published Behind umented period of service, though, was the Scenes, or Thirty Years a Slave and Jennie Hodgers, a young Irishwoman who Four in the White House, in which she told spent three years with the Ninety-fifth what it was like to work for the Lincolns Illinois Infantry Regiment as Albert during the war. In 1887, Mary Livermore Cashier. Hodgers was able to conceal her published My Story of the War: A Woman’s identity for so long because she never Narrative to share her experiences working needed medical care. As a result, she was with relief agencies to deliver supplies to able to fight in approximately forty battles soldiers on the front lines and to improve and campaigns, including the Vicksburg living conditions in military camps and Campaign. (The name Albert Cashier ap- hospitals. Livermore remained politically pears on a Civil War monument there.) active after the war, as did many other After the war, Hodgers continued to mas- women who were involved in political ac- querade as a man, working as a farmhand tivism during the Civil War. For example, in Illinois, until a doctor discovered her Sojourner Truth participated in postwar true gender while treating her for a broken programs that helped former slaves find leg in 1911. places to live and later joined efforts to gain Some female soldiers did not continue women the right to vote. Harriet Tubman their deceptions after the war, however, and many other prominent Civil War ac- instead deciding to share their experi- tivists also became involved in the ences in writing. Among these was Sarah woman’s suffrage movement, as well as ef- Emma Edmonds, who enlisted in 1861 as forts to improve the lives of emancipated a male nurse under the name Franklin slaves. See also Barton, Clarissa (Clara) Thompson but a year later became a spy Harlowe; Bickerdyke, Mary Ann; Boyd, for the Union. More commonly, though, Belle; Chesnut, Mary Boykin; Greenhow, women writers told about more ordinary Rose O’Neal; Livermore, Mary; Stowe, wartime experiences. For example, Mary Harriet (Elizabeth) Beecher; Truth, So- Boykin Chesnut, a Southern officer’s journer; Tubman, Harriet; Van Lew, Eliza- wife, wrote about what she saw in mili- beth; Walker, Mary Edwards.