Elizabeth D. Leonard is the John J. and Cornelia V. Gibson Professor of History at Colby College. The author of several books, including Yankee Women, All the Daring of a Soldier, Lincoln’s Avengers, and Men of Color to Arms!, she lives in Waterville, Maine.
Dr. Mary E. Walker wore bloomers, scandalized bureaucrats, and fought to be commissioned a surgeon in the Union Army. Sophronia Bucklin left her home and family upstate New York to become a battlefield nurse. Annie Wittenmyer coordinated Iowa's military relief supplies and later organized special diet kitchens for wounded soldiers, saving many lives. All three women pushed beyond prevailing Victorian antebellum mores to make meaningful contributions to the Civil War. Leonard (history, Colby Coll.) examines their lives and struggles against a male-dominated society that insisted a woman's place was in the home, not on the battlefield or in the hospital. She highlights one battle behind the war: the fight for professional recognition-that is, compensation and acknowledgment of real contributions-waged by these and many other women, some of whom sacrificed as much as the soldiers they tended. A powerful and valuable addition to larger public library history collections.-Nancy L. Whitfield, Meriden P.L., Ct.
Victorian life, as we're reminded by Leonard, a history professor at Colby College in Maine, delineated gender spheres: the home for women and the rest of the world for men. The Civil War challenged this construction as women created new places for themselves. Yankee Sophronia Bucklin was a frontline nurse who was self-confident enough to question the authority of army surgeons, and Annie Wittenmeyer organized supplies for hospitals. Mary Walker was the only woman doctor in the Union Army--and served wearing bloomers. Postwar accounts reintegrated the contributions of these women, writes Leonard, into conventional patterns ``to foster a return of middle-class gender arrangements to their status quo antebellum.'' But nothing could take away Mary Walker's hard-won Congressional Medal of Honor. A thoughtful and original study. Photos not seen by PW. (Sept.)
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