Disunion follows the Civil War as it unfolded.

On Aug. 29, 1862, during the Second Battle of Bull Run, Union soldiers could see a young woman helping the wounded seek shelter under a rock ledge, while taking fire herself. At Petersburg in June 1864, Sgt. Frederick O. Talbot, of the First Maine Heavy Artillery, found himself standing beside this same woman as she beckoned soldiers to the frontline breastwork to be treated. He was told that the men of the Fifth Michigan Infantry would have anyone’s “life in a minute” for saying “any harm of her.”

Annie Etheridge had gone off to war with her husband, James, in 1861. He deserted after the First Battle of Bull Run, but Annie remained, serving as a battlefield medic with the Second and Third Michigan, a unit eventually incorporated into the Fifth Infantry Regiment.

Etheridge is the most famous of the Civil War “daughters of regiments,” who, along with “mothers,” tended soldiers in camp, sometimes in battle, and on the march. She went on foot and horseback, treating the wounded and taking them off the field. Although she participated in 28 battles, she was wounded only once. And she did more than tend to the wounded. On two occasions she rallied the troops: at Chancellorsville, riding along the line, urging the soldiers to hold it, and at Spotsylvania, leading retreating troops back into battle, under hot fire. Etheridge received the coveted Kearny Cross, awarded to enlisted personnel of the First Division, Third Army Corps who “most distinguished” themselves in combat.

Etheridge, along with Marie Tepe of the 114th Pennsylvania, are perhaps the most romantic heroines of the war, because they served under fire, undisguised, in feminine attire. An additional 400 women, according to the Sanitary Commission agent Mary Livermore, were known to have disguised themselves as men.

They include Jennie Hodgers, who enlisted in the 95th Illinois Infantry, serving for three years and participating in 40 battles. Her motive: “I wanted excitement.” Hodgers developed a reputation for being a daring soldier, evincing “nerveless performance in combat situations and tirelessness on the march.” She returned to Illinois and lived out the next 50 years as a man, her gender revealed only when she became an elderly victim of an automobile accident.

Like Hodgers, many disguised women maintained their cover by adopting male lifestyles and mannerisms. Others were discovered in sad, obvious, odd and funny ways. Most women were identified as such when they came sick or wounded into hospitals. Having sweet faces, peachy complexions and small hands and feet were clear give-aways. Yet a Rochester recruit got up one morning and, completely forgetting herself, put her pants on over her head, thinking they were her dress. A cavalryman and teamster working for Gen. Philip Sheridan were revealed when they fell drunk into a river and attempts were made to revive them. Conversely, Pvt. Franklin Thompson, a k a Sarah Emma Edmonds, of the Second Michigan Infantry, kept the secret for one woman who died on the field at Antietam: Edmonds buried her in an unmarked grave.

Female soldiers passing as men could be determined to stay the course, enlisting in new regiments after each discovery. Fourteen-year-old Lizzie Compton, a Canadian, served in eight regiments. Frances Hook holds the record for serving in 10 different regiments. Versatile Fanny Wilson of Williamsburg, N.Y. enlisted in the 24th New Jersey, took sick at Vicksburg and was discharged, did a stint as a ballet dancer, and then joined the Third Illinois Cavalry.

Library of Congress

The Civil War women also carried on a century-old family tradition. Continental Army women traveled with their husbands’ units, working as nurses, cooks, laundresses and water carriers for artillery units. The Civil War carried on this family tradition. Civil War soldiers were mostly farmers, and farm families worked together in the home and the fields, so separation in war would have been the odd circumstance. Keith Blalock of the 26th North Carolina told his recruiter that he wouldn’t enlist unless his wife was enrolled with him. They fought in three battles together.

Often they enlisted from the same motives as men: a patriotic sense of duty, to uphold family traditions, to gain better or any pay, for abolition. Private Lyons Wakeman, a k a Sarah Rosetta, of the 153rd New York Infantry, wrote home: “I am as independent as a hog on the ice.”

Most women, however, seemed to have joined to be with their husbands, boyfriends or brothers. Reportedly, the husband of Mary Owens, a Pennsylvanian, “was killed by her side in their first battle.” In one Philadelphia case, after the husband enlisted, the wife was unable to support herself and their new baby; so she left the infant with neighbors and joined her husband’s regiment. The baby died shortly thereafter. Melverina Peppercorn of Tennessee saw no reason why she should not enlist. She was older than her brother and could shoot as well as he. Twenty-year old Eliza Wilson, a “daughter” of the Fifth Wisconsin Regiment, in which several family members had enrolled, trudged along “in storm and sunshine” with her compatriots.

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In the Victorian era, women’s lives could be tenuous: a number of female soldiers were orphans, widows and escaping abused children and wives and prostitutes. A 19-year-old drummer girl in the 112th Indiana Regiment joined to be with her three orphaned siblings in 1861. By the time The Chicago Tribune reported her medical treatment in September 1864, all her brothers had been killed in battle.

Women performed multiple duties. Cuban-born Loreta Janeta Velazquez, a k a Lt. Harry T. Buford of the Confederate Army, was surely the busiest devotee: soldier, smuggler, secret and double agent, detective, courier and bounty-jumper agent. Mary Ellis, wife of the colonel of the Union First Missouri Cavalry, assisted with surgeries, nursed on the battlefield and served as a courier and detective.

Women also served in naval roles. Elizabeth Taylor, a British volunteer, served disguised as a sailor, likely on a Confederate raider. In January 1863, presumably, Augusta Devereaux, the captain’s wife, retook their merchant ship, J. P. Ellicott, from a Confederate prize crew, with the help of mostly Caribbean seamen. She commanded the vessel to St. Thomas, where it was turned over to the United States consul. In mid-February 1862, Mary Louvest, a Norfolk free black, hand delivered traced plans of the Confederate ironclad Merrimac to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, advising that the Merrimac would soon go on the attack.

Of course, women’s primary role was medical. Some 20,000 female doctors, nurses, matrons and other hospital workers enrolled. Otherwise, women served as clerks, cooks, scouts, telegraphers, recruiters, and arsenal workers. A few women rose to officer rank, the reported highest being a Union major. They held federal- and state-appointed positions as Sanitary Commission and military state agents. There was one chaplain, and Christian Commission workers and freedmen teachers. Southern women formed militia groups like the Rhea County, Tenn., Cavalry and the Nancy Hart Girls of La Grange, Ga., and joined and aided guerrillas as well.

Whatever duties they performed, the Civil War women who valiantly served their causes distinguished themselves from men in one major way: They were all volunteers, as has been every woman who ever enrolled in military service in our nation’s history.

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Sources: Philadelphia Inquirer, Aug. 8, 1862; The New York Times, March 1, 1863; The Chicago Tribune, Sept. 16, 1864; Deanne Blanton and Lauren Cook, “They Fought Like Demons”; Linda Grant De Pauw, “Founding Mothers”; Richard Hall, “Patriots in Disguise” and “Women on the Civil War Battlefront”; C. Kay Larson, “Bonny Yank and Ginny Reb,” Minerva: Quarterly Report on Women and the Military, (Spring 1990/Summer 1992), and “Springing to the Call: A Documentary View of Women in the American Civil War”; Jane E. Schultz, “Women at the Front: Hospital Workers in Civil War America”; Jonathan D. Sutherland, “African-Americans at War: An Encyclopedia”; Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of Rebellion.

C. Kay Larson is a member of the board of the New York Military Affairs Symposium and the author of “Great Necessities: The Life, Times, and Writings of Anna Ella Carroll, 1815-1894,” “A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War” and “South Under a Prairie Sky: The Journal of Nell Churchill, U. S. Army Nurse and Scout.”