Robert C. Plumb
Ed. University of Nebraska Press, Potomac Books, 2020
pp. XVI+251 (Hardcover)
It is not easy to find materials on women who have played an important part in history but who, at the same time, have not embodied significant roles, nor have left behind documents or memoirs, diaries or correspondence. This is even more difficult when it comes to the military context, if one wants to go beyond individual exceptions well known to historians, or the traditional narratives relating to women who have dedicated themselves to the care and medical assistance of wounded soldiers.
La American Civil War (1861-1865) makes no difference in relation to this theme: even in this case it was difficult to find materials of interest, sufficiently complete and validated: and yet, both in the years preceding the outbreak of the war, and during it, many women assumed roles that were previously reserved for men (as happened in many other nations during the war).
A century and a half later, today we can consult a series of testimonies of women who have overcome a notable series of difficulties to go beyond the roles that the society of the time had automatically assigned to them, demonstrating in doing so an unshakeable confidence in themselves and a notable spirit of tenacity and enterprise.
Many civilians faced great hardship during the Civil War years, and thousands of women experienced the war firsthand or indirectly during its four-year duration.
Destruction of property, devastated lands, missing relatives and friends, and completely disrupted daily routines: in this context some women found themselves (or chose to) play crucial roles in the war effort, both in the North and in the South, and left behind important traces of achievements.
Among these, the angels which is discussed in this book, a text based on first-hand materials.
The style of the book, introduced by the Preface by Elisabeth Griffith, engages the reader and makes him/her participate in the activities carried out by these women day after day – women who had long and productive lives: two of them lived to be ninety-one and, with the exception of one of them, the others were active in giving interviews and holding conferences until their last days.
The five protagonists are: the Confederate spy Maria Isabella Boyd, known as Belle Boyd, particularly skilled at gathering information behind enemy lines; civil rights fighter Mary Edwards Walker, a doctor and the first female surgeon in the Army, who fought for the recognition of women in the medical field; abolitionist leader Frances Clayton, whose commitment to the cause led her to disguise herself as a man in order to actively fight; medical pioneer Clara Barton, and black activist Sarah Emma Edmonds, a fighter and spy.
Each of the five women is dedicated a chapter while the narrative intertwines with the main war events of the war, keeping in the background the social, cultural and economic environments of the individual states and areas involved in the fighting. As is known, the long waves of destruction and suffering of war continued for many years in America with destroyed families, mourning, wounded, mutilated and many people completely dazed and incapacitated by the shocks experienced in the war. But each of these women gave something that remained in history: just think of Clara Barton, who tirelessly dedicated herself to the care of wounded soldiers and who founded the American Red Cross, managing the organization in the role of its first president - see her book The Red Cross-In Peace and War (American Historical Press, 1898).
The Better Angels It therefore offers an excellent contribution to the history of the American Civil War, opening the doors to a different way of studying and analyzing war events.
It is advisable to integrate the reading of this text with Women in the Civil War by Mary Elizabeth Massey (1994) and with Diary of a Union Lady, 1861-1865, by Maria Lydig Daly and edited by Harold Earl Hammond (2000) both published by Nebraska Paperback, while the author of The Better Angels, Robert C. Plumb, please note Your Brother in Arms: A Union Soldier's Odyssey (University of Missouri Press, 2011).
Andrea Castiello d'Antonio
