ERIN LINDSAY McCABE

A few weeks ago, in a fit of nostalgia fueled by one of my oldest friends sending me photos of notes we’d written each other all through school (don’t tell my former teachers… or students!), I decided to go through my old journals (I kept a journal from age 7-22). In the process, I ran across the journal entry where I recounted the first time I set foot on a Civil War battlefield. Here it is, from the pen of 18 year-old me:

August 12th, 1995

The 2nd day we saw the Civil War Battlefield of Manassas (Bull Run). I hadn’t really learned it as the name Manassas, so when I realized that it was the same as Bull Run, I was even more interested in seeing it because there is a beautiful love letter written by a man (Sullivan Ballou) who died there. To see a Civil War battlefield was so interesting. One can hardly believe that it was ever covered with dead bodies and soldiers. It’s so peaceful now. It really brought history to life for me, and it was really interesting to try to piece the battle together. I want to see other battlefields now too.

I wish I’d had a bit more to say (my memory of that visit is very impressionistic and yet much more emotionally resonant than the above would make it appear). My favorite part is the the reference to Sullivan Ballou’s letter, the inspiration for the title of I Shall Be Near To You. Had I not recorded that detail in my journal, I never would have remembered that I’d thought of the letter then.

This article originally appeared on the New York Times Opinionator, where you can read it in its entirety. Here’s a taste!

On June 19, 1864, Pvt. Lyons Wakeman died of dysentery in the Marine U.S.A. General Hospital in New Orleans, after having marched 200 miles and seen combat at the Battle of Pleasant Hill, part of the Union’s Red River Campaign in Louisiana. But it would be years before Wakeman’s real identity was revealed: Lyons Wakeman was born a woman, Sarah Rosetta Wakeman.

The only people who knew for certain the soldier’s true identity were the parents and eight siblings Lyons left behind. But even they decided to keep the soldier’s secret, and afterwards spoke only of Lyons as their beloved brother.

How Rosetta managed to conceal her identity during her final month in the hospital is still a mystery. Perhaps those caring for her knew, but simply decided to let Rosetta carry the secret she’d kept for the entire two years she served in the 153rd New York State Volunteers to her grave in the Chalmette National Cemetery near New Orleans, where she is buried under her alias.

When Rosetta first left home in rural upstate New York, in the summer of 1862, she found employment as a canal man, agreeing “to run 4 trips from Binghamton to Utica for 20$ in money,” according to her letters home. It was on her first trip ferrying coal that Rosetta “saw some soldiers” near Utica who encouraged her to enlist for three years, gaining her “100 and 52$ in money” plus $13 a month thereafter – a substantial raise from the wages she had been earning.

Much of the money that Rosetta earned she sent home to her parents, telling them, “All the money I send you I want you should spend it for the family in clothing or something to eat.” Since her father was in debt, at least some of Rosetta’s motivation for enlisting was probably to help support her family. But she also alludes to more personal reasons, saying, “I want to drop all old affray and I want you to do the same and when i come home we will be good friends as ever,” and later remarking, “I had got tired of stay[ing] in that neighborhood. I knew that I could help you more to leave home than to stay.”

What conflict she had with her family is unclear, but perhaps the answer lies in the independent spirit that shines through Rosetta’s letters, particularly when she writes, “I will dress as I have a mind to for all anyone else [cares], and if they don’t let me Alone they will be sorry for it.” She also reveals her hopes of having her own farm, “in Wisconsin. On the Prairie,” and her utter lack of fear of “rebel bullets.”

She does not seem the kind of young woman who would be happy in a traditionally feminine role, and indeed, over a year into her military service, she wrote, “I have enjoyed myself 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]. I find just as good friends among Strangers as I do at home.” She goes on to suggest that she might re-enlist for five years and $800. “I can do that if I am a mind to. What do you think about that?”

How Rosetta managed to serve without discovery is one of the great questions surrounding not just her, but all 250 known female Civil War soldiers. There are clues, however.

Read the rest of the article on the New York Times Opinionator!

150 years ago today, on June 19, 1864, the real Rosetta Wakeman died of dysentery in the Marine USA General Hospital outside New Orleans after having marched 200 miles and fought in The Battle of Pleasant Hill. I’m thinking of her today with admiration for her sacrifice and with the hope that she would be proud of the novel she helped inspire. More than anything, I wanted the book to be a tribute to her and I hoped it would help keep the memory alive of what she and other female soldiers did in service to their country.

(Spoiler alert! You might not want to keep reading if you haven’t finished the book–each “true bit” gives the background on something real that inspired part of the novel: some big, some small). This one isn’t a huge one, but it does give away some fun plot points toward the end of the novel, so… I leave it up to you if you want to read more.

I was worried it would seem too coincidental that Rosetta meets Clara Barton at Antietam, but I just felt like I had to include that part of the story. For one thing, I wanted to honor the many different ways women served during the war. For another thing, Clara Barton is known to have nursed soldiers near The Cornfield and also at the nearby farmhouses-turned-hospitals. Indeed, when I visited Antietam, I discovered that the monument to Clara Barton is placed right near where the 97th New York Volunteers camped the night before the battle. But even more importantly, it is a historical fact that Clara Barton came to the aid of a female soldier after the battle.

The story told in the book They Fought Like Demons is that there was an extremely distraught soldier who was brought to a shed outside one of the farmhouse hospitals. Even two days after the battle, the soldier still refused the surgeon’s exam, although there was a bullet hole in the left side of his neck. The surgeon summoned Clara Barton who was able to calm the soldier enough that the doctor could exam the wound. It turned out that the bullet had entered at the neck and lodged in the right side of the soldier’s back, somehow missing all of the soldier’s vital organs. Without anesthesia (eek!) the doctor removed the bullet. As Clara Barton cared for the soldier, she learned that the soldier was 16 year old Mary Galloway and she had enlisted in order to find her sweetheart. Clara must have been struck by this girl’s story, because she helped find Mary’s sweetheart at a hospital in nearby Frederick, Maryland. The story has the ultimate happy ending as the couple ended up getting married.

In honor of Mary Galloway and Catherine Davidson (who had her arm amputated after being wounded at Antietam), I gave the wounded soldier that Jeremiah discovers at South Mountain the alias David Galloway. And there was a female soldier named Ida Remington who fought for the Union at South Mountain.