I am pleased to share this interview with I Shall Be Near To You author, Erin Lindsay McCabe. Since finishing her historical novel last month, my head was buzzing with more questions about women in the Civil War who, disguised as men, lived and fought with husbands, lovers, husbands and brothers. I was seized by the need to know more, and the busy author graciously answered my questions--via e-mail-- with the copious details I craved.
Who were they? How did they do it? Why did they do it? Did they make a difference? McCabe told me everything I needed to know, and I thank her again for sharing her mastery of a little known slice of women's history. I still shake my head at the thought of it. Women, passing as men, in the thick of battle. Who knew?
1. Do you believe your novel is revealing lesser-known chapters of Civil
War history? I can't believe many people, even Civil War buffs, know about
these women signing on to the fight?
Most of the Civil War buffs I have encountered do know that women fought in
the Civil War. When I visited a reenactment here in California as part of my
research, it was made very clear to me that the regiments participating there
were “equal opportunity” and I saw several female soldiers in the ranks. That
said, most people I talk to are pretty surprised to learn that women fought,
and they are even more surprised when they hear the numbers (250 documented,
400-1000 estimated). Their reaction is usually very much like mine, when I
first learned of these women—disbelief, shock. Several readers have commented
that they thought the premise for the book was implausible or even ridiculous,
until they learned it was based on fact.
It’s such a great piece of history and I feel like it’s
important, especially for girls and women, to know just how fully women have
been involved in all aspects of this nation’s history. One of my hopes in
writing this novel was that it would serve as a tribute to the real women who
enlisted, and help their stories gain more exposure. There are several fabulous
history books that focus on women’s service in the Civil War, but I feel like
this topic was ripe for fiction because we really have so few details about
most of the women, and so little of it is in their own words.
2. Rosetta disguised herself for love. Was that the motivation of
most other women who took this drastic action? Rosetta Wakeman, a real woman
who passed as a man and enlisted in a New York regiment, didn't seem to have
that element in her life.
The real Rosetta didn’t have romantic love as a motivation to join up, but
it’s very clear from her letters home that she did love her family very much.
She frequently sent home small gifts for her siblings (a knife, a ring, a
photo) and she asked about the farm in almost every letter. Her father was in
debt and she sent quite a bit of the money she made home, so her main
motivation seemed to be that she could earn better money and help her family
more as a soldier. But she also says in one letter, “I like to be a soldier
very much,” and in another “I have enjoyed my self the best since I have been
gone away from home than I ever did before in my life. I have had plenty of
money to spend and a good time asoldier[ing].” Maybe that was just a brave face
she was putting on for her family, but I tend to think that she really enjoyed
the freedom she had, living as a man. That said, most of the documented women
who served did go with husbands, fiancés, lovers, or even brothers and fathers.
So love was definitely a big motivator. But there are also women, like Sarah
Emma Edmonds, who served because they were patriotic and wanted to fight for
something they believed in, or Jennie Hodgers who wanted to experience the
adventure of being a soldier. Basically women had every reason men did for
enlisting.
3. Many soldiers on both sides came from farms. I can see how a hardy young
woman like your Rosetta could fool people. Is that why you portrayed her as
strong, capable and unafraid—so she could more easily pass as a man?
I really wanted to be true to the voice of the real Rosetta, which shines
through in her letters. She comes across as being all of those qualities—strong,
capable, and brave— but also tender. Many of the other women who fought earned
promotions or were remembered as being courageous and tough, and I felt like,
in order to do what they did, and pull it off for years (some all the way
through pregnancy even!), these women had to be incredibly determined. So, yes
those qualities make it easier to pass as a man, but I think these were people
who were accustomed to hard physical labor and having to work for their own
survival. Living on a farm must have been a big help in being more prepared to
do the job of a soldier.
4. I presume physicals were not required to join up. How many of these
women were detected during the war and what was the typical response?
The physical was often just a handshake, or a matter of having a potential
soldier open up his mouth to check that he had enough teeth to tear open the
cartridges to load his weapon. There was really no common or standard examination,
and obviously it wasn’t very thorough. The fact that the army accepted children
in the ranks (some drummer boys were as young as 9 or 10) and did not confirm
the ages they were given by enlistees, made it easier for women to pass
alongside teenage boys whose voices hadn’t changed and who didn’t need to
shave. There was also no official
protocol for what to do when a woman was discovered in the ranks. Some were imprisoned for, as Rosetta puts it
in one of her letters, “not doing acCording to regulation.” Others were drummed
out of the regiment and sent home. And some were allowed to stay. The men who
learned after the war that some of their comrades had been women were almost
universally supportive—they remembered their fellow soldiers for their actions
and their gender just didn’t matter.
5. After reading the journals and letters, what do these women say was more
difficult--keeping up with the physical demands of marching and battle or the
total lack of privacy? How did they cope with menstruation? Can't even imagine.
There is absolutely no discussion in either of the first-hand accounts I
read about the practical, day-to-day realities of how they managed to keep up
their disguises. I was so frustrated by that! Some of the women were remembered
as using tobacco, drinking, and gambling—perhaps activities they took up in
order to help maintain their disguise. I’m sure many of the women were helped
by the fact that they were used to doing farm work or other physical labor. It
also helped that standards of modesty were higher at the time—it was not at all
uncommon for men to choose to use the bushes instead of the latrines, which
were notoriously disgusting. One theory is that the poor nutrition and the long
marches may have caused many women to stop menstruating entirely or that with
so many wounded and dead on the battlefields, it might not have been to hard to
dispose of soiled rags. But how they did it remains one of the big questions I
have.
6. Anything in your research surprise you--how they fared in battle, for
example? Where they fought? Any women part of the action in Gettysburg?
There are five women known to have served at Gettysburg, including two women
who participated in Pickett’s charge (one was wounded severely and the other
was discovered dead by Union burial crews). The women were pretty much
everywhere—at major battles and plenty of smaller engagements too. Aside from
my initial shock that women had served in such numbers and I had never known, I
think the biggest surprise was learning that women had served while pregnant
and had gone undiscovered until the moment they gave birth—it seems impossible,
and yet, it happened! I was also surprised in general by the moments of
humanity that the troops would demonstrate toward the other side—Union troops
cheering for a Confederate soldier who went out on the field to give water to
the wounded in the midst of a battle, for instance. That soldier could have easily
been shot, but he wasn’t. There are lots of stories like that, where the two
sides treated each other with kindness and humor, although sadly, none of that
made it into the novel. There were also plenty of horrific details that I was
surprised by that did make it into the book—like the soldier who carved
keepsake rings out of bones he found on the battlefields. That’s something I
could never have made up.
7. How were these women treated by their hometowns and communities when
they returned?
There is even less information available about the female soldiers’ lives
after they left the service than there is about their time in the army. The few
women whose lives are documented after the war didn’t talk publicly about their
experiences and only a few of them attempted to get military pensions, well
after the war ended. Some of them were only identified as veterans in their
obituaries. My sense is that most of the women didn’t talk about their
experience much, and if they did, it was within the confines of their families,
sharing their stories with their children. I think most of them probably just
went back and immersed themselves in the work of daily living. I don’t know if
it was because they didn’t want to talk about what they had done, or they felt
they couldn’t. I imagine for many of them it would have been difficult after
having been treated as equals—some of the women had even voted during their
service—to go back to being unable to vote,
own property, or even have their own bank accounts. It seems like it must have
been very galling to give up those kinds of freedoms, to give up being considered
a full-fledged citizen. Some women didn’t want to give up that freedom, for
whatever reason. At least two women continued living as men after the war, one
being discovered only after she died (and known only by her male alias, Otto
Schaffer), and the other, Jennie Hodgers, being discovered toward the end of
her life.
8. I notice at your website there are photos of you at Antietam and
Bull Run. How did those visits affect your writing? And your Playlist--how did
that help you recreate the time?
The playlist was mostly about creating the right mood and tone for myself,
although some of the music I listened to was music that the soldiers would have
listened to and sung (The Battle Hymn of the Republic, for instance). But a lot
of what is on the playlist is modern folk music, which I love because the songs
are about deep emotional issues, but are sung in very simple, very beautiful,
very earthy language. The kind of character that Rosetta is, and the soldiers
who fought, so many of them were from agrarian backgrounds—I imagined they
would filter their stories through what they had experienced of the land and
nature and animals. That’s a huge part of why I ended up needing to go to the
battlefields. By the time I visited them, I had written a complete draft of the
novel, relying on battlefield maps to trace the route of my characters, and
using field guides and historic photos to imagine the setting (and also
memories of my first visit to Manassas in 1995). But I really felt like I
needed to be in that physical space to really understand the landscape and what
the soldiers might have seen and experienced and felt. I wanted to walk as much
of the route the soldiers marched and find the places on the battlefield where
key moments occur. Sitting in those places and knowing that hundreds of
soldiers fought and died all around where I was walking was intense and
emotional. Afterwards, I felt so much more confident working on those battle
scenes, even though many of the revisions I made as a result of the trip were
small details, really. The trip was probably most helpful in allowing me to
feel like I had the authority to write those scenes. It was a huge challenge
since I have no military experience whatsoever, but I so wanted to get the
battles right and do justice to what the soldiers experienced. Hopefully I succeeded.
