Cross-dressers of the Civil War: hundreds of women disguised themselves as men to fight on both sides--a century and a half before the ban on women in combat was lifted.

• Author: Majerol, Veronica
• Position: TIMES PAST 1865

On April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee formally surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia, effectively ending the Civil War (1861-65).

In the days leading up to the surrender, their armies fought in a series of fierce skirmishes that ultimately left the Confederates starving, horseless, and desperate. Among the final casualties was "a woman in Confederate uniform," according to one Union soldier's diary, "found between the lines of the Appomattox River."

On the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War, the nation is reflecting on the more than 600,000 men killed in America's bloodiest conflict. But another group of soldiers fought just as bravely, though they've long been forgotten: the hundreds of women who disguised themselves as men to fight.

There are about 250 documented cases* of women who hid their sex to fight for the Union and Confederate armies, according to DeAnne Blanton of the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Like male soldiers, they took up arms and died in nearly all the major battles, from the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861 to Appomattox in 1865. By poring over hundreds of Civil War letters, diaries, newspapers, and other accounts, Blanton and Lauren M. Cook, co-authors of the book They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the Civil War, recovered the stories of these secret warriors, who have received little attention.

"Women who went off to fight in the Civil War were really strong, tough women," says Blanton. "History doesn't reflect that."

They enlisted for all sorts of reasons: Some were swept up in the romance of war; others were running away from a bad home life or seeking greater freedom in an era of restricted rights for women. But the three biggest reasons women fought, says Blanton, were "love, money, and patriotism."

Women were second-class citizens in the 1800s. They couldn't vote in most states, and they had limited property rights and educational and job opportunities--grievances that Elizabeth Cady Stanton and other women's rights advocates outlined in the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions at the Seneca Falls Convention in New York.

Soldier or Seamstress?

Working-class and immigrant women had it particularly hard. They toiled at low-paying, difficult jobs as seamstresses, maids, and laundresses, or on farms and in mills--earning a fraction of what men typically made. That a private in the Union Army was paid $13 a month--roughly double a maid's salary--helps explain why the majority of the women who took up arms in the Civil War were from working-class backgrounds.

"The army was no harder than the life they were already living," says Blanton, "and they were going to make more money."

Some of the women who enlisted had already been living as men. Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, for example, had worked on coal boats disguised as a man to double her maid's salary. Under the name Lyons Wakeman, she joined the 153rd New York Infantry in 1862 for the Union Army's generous $152 enlistment bonus and to satisfy her spirit of adventure. "I am as independent as a hog on ice," she wrote in an 1863 letter to her family in Afton, New York.

Sarah Edmonds (Franklin Thompson), a Canadian escaping an arranged marriage, lived as a Bible "salesman" in the U.S. for two years before the Civil War, which she joined on the Union side. "I can only thank God that I was free and could go forward and work," she wrote in her 1864 memoir, "and I was not obliged to stay at home and weep."

Fighting as men enabled female soldiers to travel, play cards, and speak their minds--freedoms that were denied to "respectable" women at the time. Many also took advantage of the right to vote, which wasn't formally granted to women until 1920, with the passage of the 19th Amendment: Union soldier Martha Lindley (Jim Smith), for example, cast her vote for Abraham Lincoln in the 1864 presidential election.

Lindley, like many other women, joined the war to be close to a loved one. "I was frightened half to death," she said about joining the 6th U.S. Cavalry in Pittsburgh, "but I was so anxious to be with my husband that I resolved to see the thing through if it killed me."

Frances Hook, a Chicago native who lost both parents at age 3, enlisted in the Union army shortly after the war started to be near her only brother. After he was killed in the Battle of Shiloh in 1862, Hook (aliases Frank Miller, Frank Henderson, and Frank Fuller) kept on fighting until Confederate forces captured her in Florence, Alabama, in 1863. (She was later shot in the thigh while trying to escape but survived.)

And like many of the men who fought, many of the women who enlisted believed in the Union or Confederate cause. As the only living member of her family, Mary Ann Pitman (Confederate Lieutenant Rawley) felt she "ought to help defend my country," adding that...