The mysterious Private Thompson : the double life of Sarah Emma Edmonds, Civil War soldier /
Resurrecting a lost hero of the Civil War, the author tells the remarkable story of one heroic woman who defied convention in nineteenth-century America to live, work, and defend her country at a time of war, when most women were restricted to home and hearth. Sarah Emma Edmonds was a young Canadian...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York :
Free Press,
[2005]
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Sample text Book review (H-Net) Publisher description |
| Summary: | Resurrecting a lost hero of the Civil War, the author tells the remarkable story of one heroic woman who defied convention in nineteenth-century America to live, work, and defend her country at a time of war, when most women were restricted to home and hearth. Sarah Emma Edmonds was a young Canadian woman who adopted the guise of a man to escape an arranged marriage at seventeen. For two years, living as Franklin Thompson, she enjoyed freedoms that men enjoyed, traveling the country at will as a successful book salesman. In 1861 she enlisted in the Second Michigan Infantry at nineteen years old. The author uncovers the courageous life of the only woman ever awarded a full soldier's pension for her service during the Civil War. Drawing on Emma's journals and those of the men she served with, Gansler recreates Edmonds' experience through some of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War - including both the First and Second Battles of Bull Run, the Peninsula Campaign, and the Battle of Fredericksburg - during which she served with distinction in combat as a "male" nurse, and braved enemy fire as a mail carrier. A cinematic narrative of one brave soldier's experience of the Civil War, this intimate portrait is, above all, a personal drama about the lengths one daring woman was willing to go to chart her own destiny. --from inside jacket flap. |
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| Physical Description: | xii, 255 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 239-242) and index. |
| ISBN: | 0743242807 9780743242806 |