Maine's Capital Area

The Kennebec Historical Society’s July Public Presentation: “Women in the American Civil War” The scope, details, and significance of men’s political and military involvement in the American Civil War
have been the subject of countless studies over the course of the hundred and fifty years since Appomattox. Similarly, historians have devoted considerable attention to men’s experience of the
war on both sides of the conflict. In contrast, until quite recently historians have ignored the war-time experiences and contributions of American women, North and South, on the mistaken principle that war is (or at least was, in the nineteenth century) men’s work alone, and that the battle front was distinguishable from the home front and also mattered far more. This talk by the author of two books on the topic begins to restore women to their important place in the story of America’s great national struggle.

Elizabeth D. Leonard is the John J. and Cornelia V. Gibson, Professor of History at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. A native of New York City, she earned her Ph. D. in U.S. history from the University of California, Riverside, in 1992. Leonard is the author of several articles and five books on the Civil War-era: Yankee Women: Gender Battles in the Civil War (1994); All the Daring of the Soldier: Women of the Civil War Armies (1999); Lincoln's Avengers: Justice,
Revenge, and Reunion after the Civil War (2004); Men of Color to Arms! Black Soldiers, Indian Wars, and the Quest for Equality (2010); and Lincoln’s Forgotten Ally: Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt of Kentucky (2011), which was named co-winner of the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize in 2012. She is
currently engaged in research for a new project, which weaves together a deeper study of Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt’s transformation from slaveholder to willing advocate and enforcer of President Abraham Lincoln’s emancipation policies, and the story of the lived experience of enslaved men from the region of Kentucky where Holt was raised—including one of Holt’s own former slaves — as they ran from slavery to fight for freedom in the Union army and then returned to try and claim the promises of Emancipation.