Women were big help in Civil War

Published 1:18 am Thursday, April 13, 2006

By By JOHN EBY / Edwardsburg Argus
CASSOPOLIS - Whether they dressed up like men, fought alongside husbands or boyfriends or spied for one side or the other, 4,000 women served in the Civil War, according to retired teacher George Purlee.
Purlee recommends the book “They Fought Like Demons” for anyone interested in learning more about this aspect of the War Between the States.
Women, passing as men, commanded more respect and better pay at a time when they were not allowed to vote until the 19th Amendment in 1920.
Women who did join the military “had to take on the same qualities as a man,” Purlee said. “They learned to smoke a pipe, to drink, to play cards and to swear. One was so rowdy, she was thrown in the guardhouse.”
Frances Clayton fought next to her spouse at Fort Donaldson. When he was shot, she “marches over her dead husband's body with her bayonet and made the charge,” Purlee said. “She was five months pregnant.”
Purlee, 69, who sells prints of Civil War figures, focused on females for the Capt. Samuel Felt Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) members Monday afternoon at Cass District Library.
Grace Bedell of Westfield, N.Y., was just a child of 11 when she wrote to presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln after her father brought back a campaign poster from an 1860.
She urged him to grow a beard to fill out his thin face. “The rest is history,” Purlee noted.
Rose O'Neal Greenhow, a Washington society woman, hearing of the first Battle of Bull Run, smuggled a note in a young woman's hair that the North was about to attack.
Pauline Cushman was suspected of spying for the South. “To prove she wasn't,” he said, Cushman “became a spy for the North.
Dorothea Dix, at age 59, convinced the skeptical military that women could do nursing. Clara Barton took responsibility for making sure camps were equipped with medical supplies and sanitation. “She was famous after the war for going to Congress to get proper burials for soldiers,” Purlee said.