Elizabeth D. Leonard. All the Daring of the Soldier: Women of the Civil War Armies. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999. 368 pp. $27.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-14-029858-1.
Reviewed by Jennifer Harbour (Department of History, University of Iowa)
Published on H-Minerva (October, 2001)
It's Our War, Too: Women as Soldiers and Spies
It's Our War, Too: Women as Soldiers and Spies
In her study of the Civil War women soldiers and spies, Elizabeth D. Leonard relates the story of a group of extraordinary women. Leonard posits that the women in her study have for too long been cast as mere literary figures or infamous symbols from songs and legendary tales. Instead, Leonard argues, women like Margaret Corbin (a.k.a. "Molly Pitcher") of Revolutionary War fame actually existed. What's more, Leonard suggests, women such as Sarah Emma Edmonds (who dressed as a male soldier) "made the decision to put their lives on the line and engage in the traditionally manly profession of war" in a deliberate act, something which has continually confounded scholars (p. 19). Leonard offers a chapter on each of the following four topics: women spies, "female" espionage and resistance, army women and their predecessors, and real and fictional army women. She then presents two chapters on women soldiers (with special attention given to Deborah Sampson), and a final chapter on the motivations of her subjects.
Leonard culls these stories from a variety of sources, making good use of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, newspapers, contemporaneous writings, personal and family papers, and secondary sources. In chapter after chapter, Leonard recounts the stories of Civil War women who left their homes and risked their lives to serve their country in battle, both on and off the field. Leonard's main motivation for writing this work, however, seems not to simply celebrate the lives of her subjects, but to question their motivations for "joining the ranks" in the first place. Primary and secondary sources alike indicate that women "joined" the war effort for several reasons, such as patriotism, the desire to follow a male loved one, and longing for adventure. Even though Leonard's research provides evidence for these reasons, she instead asserts that many women took up the military cause because they needed the money. Although some tasks such as spying did not offer a typical wage, women who occupied the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder needed shelter and food at the very least. Leonard urges other scholars to think about these factors when considering women and the Civil War.
This is an important book, especially for those scholars who continue to insist (despite all evidence to the contrary) that war is the domain of men. To that end, though, Leonard's book would have been even more welcome for scholars of women if it had included an analysis of gender, to say nothing of race. Leonard does mention some African-American women, but she does not interrogate reasons why their experiences might have been different from Anglos, despite the fact that her thesis turns on notions of class. At any rate, this work is an excellent building block for historians of women who wish to reclaim the arena of war as legitimate area of study.
If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the network, at: https://networks.h-net.org/h-minerva.
Citation:
Jennifer Harbour. Review of Leonard, Elizabeth D., All the Daring of the Soldier: Women of the Civil War Armies.
H-Minerva, H-Net Reviews.
October, 2001.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=5568
Copyright © 2001 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at hbooks@mail.h-net.org.