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| Unidentified image. Author's collection. |
Introduction:
Throughout the retelling of the great battles and campaigns of the Civil War, there remains a voice that often goes unheard. It is the voice of those citizens who could not become political officials or military heroes but who often served their section of the country just as passionately and bravely. It is the women of the Civil War era who too often get lost amid the descriptions of battle scenes and war time politics. During the war, these women endured great loss and deprivation, which warrant their being described as “war heroes.”
One must look beyond military and political greatness in determining the criteria for labeling an individual a war hero. The devastating Civil War that tore the United States apart from 1861 to 1865 left behind a legacy of ordinary people who had achieved something out of the ordinary when viewed from a late twentieth century perspective. Whether expressing some grandiose sense of courage, or simply acting on an innate instinct to survive, most of the men and women who lived through the Civil War experienced a drastic change in their everyday lives. Many were focused to behave in a manner very different from that to which they were accustomed. The stories of the ordinary men who became great military leaders and soldiers or important political officials are among the most popular accounts in American historical writing. These “war heroes” are well-known, and often revered, by school and adults alike. However, it is the purpose of this study to chronicle and describe another type of war hero. The woman who watched as her husband, sons and brothers went off to fight in a war that she may not have completely supported; the woman who was forced to abandon her home and flee to the hillsides with her children; the woman who, for the first time in her life, had to wonder about the source of her next meal and that of her children – these are the stories of the other “war heroes” about which American historian are beginning to focus their writing.
Shannon Ewing Sexton, Marshall University