The Civil War period is heartbreaking. In addition to the idea that our country was fighting over keeping millions of people enslaved and spreading legal enslavement into new territory acquired by the United States, it was long and bloody, and it tore families, communities, and friendships apart.
The Civil War is ripe with ways to represent all of our students in the classroom. One-third of the soldiers in the Union Army were immigrants including Irish, German, Scottish, Italian, French, Polish, and English people. Black soldiers were permitted to join the army in 1863. Lastly, more people died in the American Civil War than in any other American conflict. In short, the Civil War was tragic and shouldn’t be romanticized.
The Civil War also opens opportunities for us to learn about women’s history and gender expression. During the war, women found ways to defy gender expectations and do their work outside the home. This doesn’t mean that women were given full rights and acceptance by the government and society after the war, but it gave women a taste of what it would be like to produce supplies, spy, raise money, do “domestic” work on the battlefield, and even fight. Women of all races and socioeconomic classes contributed to the war effort in some way, and her race and class affected not only her contributions but the way she was treated for making those contributions.
Free Black women raised money and made supplies, among other roles. Both Black and white women were nurses on the battlefield. Some women dressed as men and fought for the army while others took care of homes and businesses while men were away. There are women who fought as men and then lived as men for the rest of their lives after the war. Can you see your students’ faces lighting up because someone like them made a difference in history? Those examples can lead to an epiphany: they can make a difference, too!
One of my favorite examples of women in the Civil War is Loreta Janeta Velázquez. Velázquez was a soldier and a spy. She disguised herself as a man and enlisted in the Confederate Army under the name Henry T. Buford. Not only did she do that, but she recruited 236 men in Arkansas and marched them to Florida! After the death of her husband (a Confederate soldier), she traveled to Virginia and fought in the First Battle of Bull Run. She was horrified by the violence of war, so her next move was to dress as a woman and go to Washington, D.C. to be a spy for the Confederacy. We know all of this from her 1876 autobiography, The Woman in Battle: A Narrative of the Exploits, Adventures and Travels of Madame Loreta Janeta Velazquez, Otherwise Known as Lieutenant Harry J. Buford.
Louisa Smith was a Black woman who was enslaved in Mississippi. She self-emancipated in 1863 with her husband and many from their community, when between 1861 and 1863 many Black men, women, and children looked for the safety provided by the Union Army by self-emancipating. The Union Army picked them up on a gunboat when they were patrolling the Mississippi River, and welcomed the men to fight, but weren’t as welcoming to the women. In fact, the Union Army forced Louisa and other women to get off the boat down river! Louisa was what was known as “Union contraband.” She was assigned to a contraband camp where the conditions were less than desirable. There wasn’t enough shelter, clothing, or food in these camps. The federal government forced contraband like Louisa to work on abandoned plantations. They were supposed to be paid for their work, but weren’t. Louisa eventually escaped the camp where she was working, and after the death of her husband, she became a laundress and lived with a soldier in Company D in Jackson, Mississippi. However, the Union Army ordered all Black women and children away from camp. She then went to Vicksburg, Mississippi. After the war, she was a laundress, sold produce and chickens, and filed for a widow’s pension.
Albert Cashier is another soldier I like to talk about with students. Cashier was assigned female at birth, named Jennie Hodgers, and was an Irish immigrant. He likely left Belfast and settled in Illinois. He enlisted in the Union Army as Albert D.J. Cashier and fought in forty battles, including the Siege of Vicksburg. He was captured there, but escaped back to union lines. He is remembered as a brave fighter! After the war, Cashier went back to Illinois and worked for Illinois state senator Ira Lish. A doctor discovered that Cashier was biologically female when treating him for a broken leg, but respected his privacy. Had the doctor said anything, Cashier would lose his army pension. Even when Cashier was recovering from his leg injury in a rest home for Veterans, the staff respected his privacy.
When Cashier went to the Watertown State Hospital for the Insane in 1914, the facility staff allowed the information that Cashier was biologically female to leak to newspapers. He was charged with defrauding the government to receive a military pension. Thankfully, those who fought with him had his back and testified that he was not Jennie Hodgers, but Albert Cashier. Cashier kept his military status, but the institution forced him to wear women’s clothing and treated him as a woman. He fell and broke his hip because of the clothes he was supposed to wear and he spent the last of his life bedridden. Because those at the hospital couldn’t simply accept and treat Cashier for who he was, this hero died. He was buried with full military honors and in his uniform.
Sources: history.com, WAMS.nyhistory.org https://wams.nyhistory.org/a-nation-divided/civil-war/loreta-janeta-velazquez/, https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/albert-cashier.htm#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20most%20famous,a%20man%20was%20Albert%20Cashier.