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Despite the fact that the U.S. Army did not acknowledge or advertise their existence, it is surprising that the women soldiers of the Civil War are not better known today. After all, their existence was known at the time and through the rest of the nineteenth century. Even though some modern writers have considered Seelye and Cashier, the majority of historians who have written about the common soldiers of the war have either ignored women in the ranks or trivialized their experience. While references, usually in passing, are sometimes found, the assumption by many respected Civil War historians is that soldier-women were eccentric and their presence isolated. Textbooks hardly ever mention these women.

The writings of Bell Wiley and Mary Massey are good examples. Wiley wrote at some length of "the gentler sex who disguised themselves and swapped brooms for muskets [who] were able to sustain the deception for amazingly long periods of time." But he later refers to them, indirectly, as "freaks and distinct types." Massey erroneously asserted that "probably most of the women soldiers were prostitutes or concubines." For the most part, modern researchers looking for evidence of soldier-women must rely heavily upon Civil War diaries and late nineteenth-century memoirs.

It is true that the military service of women did not affect the outcome of campaigns or battles. Their service did not alter the course of the war. Compared with the number of men who fought, the women are statistically irrelevant. But the women are significant because they were there and they were not supposed to be. The late nineteenth-century newspaper writers grasped this point. The actions of Civil War soldier-women flew in the face of mid-nineteenth-century society's characterization of women as frail, subordinate, passive, and not interested in the public realm.

The Union CMSR for John Williams of the Seventeenth Missouri Infantry, Company H, shows that the nineteen-year-old soldier enlisted as a private on October 3, 1861, in St. Louis and was mustered into the regiment on the seventh. Later that month, Williams was discharged on the grounds: "proved to be a woman." The Confederate CMSR for Mrs. S. M. Blaylock, Twenty-sixth North Carolina Infantry, Company F, states:

This lady dressed in men's clothes, Volunteered [sic], received bounty and for two weeks did all the duties of a soldier before she was found out, but her husband being discharged, she disclosed the fact, returned the bounty, and was immediately discharged April 20, 1862.

Another woman documented in the records held by the AGO was Mary Scaberry, alias Charles Freeman, Fifty-second Ohio Infantry. Scaberry enlisted as a private in the summer of 1862 at the age of seventeen. On November 7 she was admitted to the General Hospital in Lebanon, Kentucky, suffering from a serious fever. She was transferred to a hospital in Louisville, and on the tenth, hospital personnel discovered "sexual incompatibility [sic]." In other words, the feverish soldier was female. Like John Williams, Scaberry was discharged from Union service.

Not all of the women soldiers of the Civil War were discharged so quickly. Some women served for years, like Sarah Emma Edmonds Seelye, and others served the entire war, like Albert D. J. Cashier. These two women are the best known and most fully documented of all the women combatants.

http://americancivilwar.com/women/index.html

This lady dressed in men's clothes, Volunteered [sic], received bounty and for two weeks did all the duties of a soldier before she was found out, but her husband being discharged, she disclosed the fact, returned the bounty, and was immediately discharged April 20, 1862.

Another tragic but odd thing early in the war is that men on both sides would foolishly run out trying to impress their friends in the ranks by trying to catch a cannon ball. When a cannon ball is fired at a long distance and it's arched trajectory has reached its end it will often begin to bounce much like a bowling ball (Soild Shot). Just imagine trying to go out and catch a 10-50 lb bowling ball traveling at 50-100 mph?

Lincoln also felt that the superior race should be assigned to the White race, therefore, it's a good thing he didn't include his own belief's into his politics correct?

Charles, most of the abolitionists were also slave owners, therefore, they were being hypocrites.

I find that slavery was actually universal during the period. I do agree that Lincoln was a racist, but he however did cast aside his racist belief's to do what he felt was best for the country, hence why the Emancipation Proclamation was enacted, but it was virtually a useless document considering both North and the South ignored it at first

Nona37
Ok, Topgear or anyone else on here. Do you have any cool facts about Women in the civil war? Inquiring minds want to know :)

Douglass attended the funeral of Abraham Lincoln and gave an impromptu speech that was remembered as one of the best eulogies ever given to a man.